VLC not playing videos

Support & Help Requests
#1

I am having an odd problem with VLC. I think it started when I upgraded to 20.10. With VLC installed from the repository, double clicking a video brings up a VLC window but it immediately closes. Tried re-installing several times. I activated logs and got this:

-- logger module started --
main: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
gl: Initialized libplacebo v2.72.0 (API v72)
vaapi error: profile(7) is not supported
gl: Initialized libplacebo v2.72.0 (API v72)
gl: Initialized libplacebo v2.72.0 (API v72)
-- logger module started --
main: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
main: playlist is empty
-- logger module stopped --
-- logger module started --
main: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
main: playlist is empty
-- logger module stopped --
-- logger module started --
main: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
gl: Initialized libplacebo v2.72.0 (API v72)
vaapi error: profile(7) is not supported
gl: Initialized libplacebo v2.72.0 (API v72)
gl: Initialized libplacebo v2.72.0 (API v72)

I really do not understand what it is telling me. I suspect some incompatibility with my video drivers. System Monitor shows: Graphics: Mesa DRI Intel G41 (ELK). This is on the motherboard, no graphics card.

I did try installing VLC in a SNAP and it works OK. Except I can not play videos from the browser. It gives an error message that it can not read the file. I am thinking snaps can not access files where Firefox places them (not downloaded to download folder).

Also I have another system with 20.10 and VLC works fine. Any suggestions what I should try next? Thanks for any help,

Bill

#2

Answering my own question, sort of. I started trying different video players although I do not understand why they would work differently. My problem is I bought a wifi camera to view my back door. Apparently it is an old design. It streams video fine. But when it records after a motion detection it saves the video in an avi file. Different players react to this file differently.

VLC in my install seems to have stopped working completely since 20.10. I can not remember if it was in the default player or not. I have been upgrading at each new release since 18.04 so I am probably far from a standard install. I suspect a driver incompatibility introduced somewhere along the line.

VLC in a snap works fine but apparently snaps have limited access to the file system. When I click on a link to a video in the camera's web page using Firefox, Firefox downloads the file and puts it under the /tmp folder. VLC says it can not read this file. But after manually moving the file VLC can read it.

Totem plays .mp4 files but does not work on .avi files. Probably the same problem as VLC.

Celluloid has none of these problems. So far it is working perfectly. It seems to be the default player in 20.04. I do not know why it was not installed on my system. I would guess it would be the result of how Ubuntu was installed and updated over time.

So I can not explain why this fixed my problem. But it is working now.

Bill