VLC Media Player

Ubuntu Version:
24.04.1 LTS

Desktop Environment (if applicable):
default

Problem Description:
Installed VLC Media Player and it would not open. I tried three different ways to install VLC. (1) From the App Center (2) sudo snap install vlc (3) Sudo apt-get install vlc and none of them worked. In Terminal I just typed VLC and it opened, and when I opened an MP4 movie it played but with errors listing in Terminal:
glconv_vaapi_X11 gl error: vaDeriveImage: Operation failed
Main video output error: video output creation failed
Main decoder error: failed to create video output

Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_Nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file:
No such file or directory

I finally installed a different media player (MPV) and it works just fine. But I would like to know why VLC would not open.
On a different computer running MINT I have VLC installed and it works just fine.
Thanks

video card try disable hardware acceleration
usually the --nooverlay option
or you could try to add /update libva-mesa-driver
mesa guide here

Just a off the cuff thought as I’m sure your ubuntu and mint systems are not using the same graphic cards. Which is the why
the other error I see is a Nvidia error, do you have a Nvidia card installed?

MPV by default disables Hardware acceleration hence my comment about disabling the hardware acceleration.

I do have Nvidia card. But - I also have Windows 10 installed on the same computer on a different Hard Drive and VLC works fine on windows. I will try to update the Libva-mesa driver and see about Hardware acceleration. Thanks.

Try disabling the Hardware acceleration first then go to the libva driver if it runs correctly with HW acceleration disabled…

What I find interesting is I have Win10 on one drive, Ubuntu 24.10 on a NVME drive (also Nvidia GTX1070 using nvidia-driver 550 for ubuntu) installed vlc using the add software installed and ran straight out of the chute no issues.

Right now Iogged into the Windows drive but the Ubuntu command to check the Nvidia is the same

C:\WINDOWS\system32>nvidia-smi
Sun Feb  2 19:08:44 2025
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 560.94                 Driver Version: 560.94         CUDA Version: 12.6     |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                  Driver-Model | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070      WDDM  |   00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| 28%   36C    P5             13W /  151W |     671MiB /   8192MiB |      0%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                              GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A      2848    C+G   ...64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\CalculatorApp.exe      N/A      |
|    0   N/A  N/A      5436    C+G   ...1.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\Video.UI.exe      N/A      |
|    0   N/A  N/A      7072    C+G   C:\Windows\explorer.exe                     N/A      |
|    0   N/A  N/A      7104    C+G   ...tionsPlus\logioptionsplus_agent.exe      N/A      |
|    0   N/A  N/A      8372    C+G   ...Data\Local\Programs\Opera\opera.exe      N/A      |
|    0   N/A  N/A      8704    C+G   ....Search_cw5n1h2txyewy\SearchApp.exe      N/A      |
|    0   N/A  N/A      9884    C+G   ...mpt_builder\LogiAiPromptBuilder.exe      N/A      |
|    0   N/A  N/A      9988    C+G   ...5n1h2txyewy\ShellExperienceHost.exe      N/A      |
|    0   N/A  N/A     10396    C+G   ...ekyb3d8bbwe\PhoneExperienceHost.exe      N/A      |
|    0   N/A  N/A     11856    C+G   ...CBS_cw5n1h2txyewy\TextInputHost.exe      N/A      |
|    0   N/A  N/A     11936    C+G   ...Data\Local\Programs\Opera\opera.exe      N/A      |
|    0   N/A  N/A     15312    C+G   ...64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\CalculatorApp.exe      N/A      |
|    0   N/A  N/A     15320    C+G   ...siveControlPanel\SystemSettings.exe      N/A      |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

so you should be able to type nvidia-smi at the terminal and see pretty close to what I displayed from my windows drive (as you can see Windows is using driver 560) as the commands are identical

When I type nvidia-smi into terminal it comes back: command not found.
I do have a nivdia geforce GTS450. Terminal also said I could installed with:
sudo apt install nvidia-utils-470. will give that a try and replace 470 with the model of my card (450).

Well that did not work.
installed nvidia-utils-470 and ran nvidia-smi and terminal came back with - failed because it couldn’t communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure the latest driver is installed.

correct nvidia driver is not loaded…

looking for the last driver version that supports that card

Hmm
Looks like your stuck in the same boat I am with the three GTX 550Ti I have on the shelf no driver support after 20.04 LTS …
my advice upgrade to a GTX 10XX series AKA GTX 10 series that is definitely supported.
or you could role back to 20.04 LTS…
which was my exact options with the GTX550Ti’s I have
(hence the GTX-1070 that I have now)

they will still display a desktop via noveu drivers but no hardware acceleration, transcoding etc.
and you can usually disable the transcoding via the flag I mentioned several post ago and get it to play …

hopefully someone will come along and say I’m wrong with a actual solution but that is where I landed at both cards used driver 390 (support ended about 2022) as the last available driver from what I’m seeing

Thank you for all your help. I gave up in the end. Downloaded a Nivdia driver but it messed up the display real bad. So I had to reinstall ubuntu. Will use the other media player and forget about VLC. Need to upgrade the hard ware on this PC. It is very OLD.
Thanks Again. Bill

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