Questions[playback](ubuntu)

I'm experiencing a weird video stuttering, on any video I play, be on youtube, vlc, mpc, If on youtube, it doesn't matter if I'm on firefox or chromium, at 140p or 4k, the problem is exactly the same, once every 5 seconds or so, the video playback just stop for a second, then resume.

I don't see any stuttering on visual effects on the desktop as of scrolling, moving windows, etc.

I run dual boot, I don't have such problem on windows.

Specs: Ryzen 5 2600, nvidia gtx 1650 Super, 16GB ram, SSD drive Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS The system is never overloaded

What I've tried:

• Changing video drivers: nouveau, nvidia 440, nvidia 450
• Installing codecs, ubuntu-restricted-extras
• Disabling hardware acceleration on programs
• Swapping from kubuntu to ubuntu
• Fresh installing ubuntu

I've searched other topics and tried their solutions, but none seem to be the same problem.. Can anybody help? I can provide more information if needed

As stated, when playing avi video files with vlc video player (no matter - fullscreen or windowed) after some time (10 to 30 minutes, seems to be somehow tied to screen dim):

• picture on screen freezes
• keyboard hangs
  • cant turn off numlock
  • ctrl+alt+whatever not working
• sometimes I can move mouse, but it cannot interact with ubuntu top panel.
• pressing power button has no effect
• audio remains playing as normal (till the end of movie)

So that's not a kernel hang, and not an app hang... but UI + USB input freeze! THE Only way to continue look movie is to press reset button.

Browsing works well, no Chrome crashes, in-browser youtube could show videos for hours. There is enough memory, less than 20% used. none of 2GB swap used. Movie files are always in RAM (/mnt/tmp/somefile.mkv, on tmpfs), RAM was checked several times, memtest ok, Chrome tabs has NOT crashed even once!

H/W:

• CPU: i7 920
• RAM: 48 gigs ram
• GPU: ATI R9 270 2Gb
• monitor: 2k 75hz IPS panel, attached via DP1.2
• usb 2.0 generic keyboard and mouse

S/W:

uname -a

Linux apc 4.18.0-22-generic #23~18.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jun 6 08:37:25 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

lsb_release -a

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
Release:    18.04
Codename:   bionic

vlc --version

VLC media player 3.0.7 Vetinari (revision 3.0.7-0-g86cee31)
VLC version 3.0.7 Vetinari (3.0.7-0-g86cee31)
Compiled by jenkins on e672859d050d (Jun  7 2019 10:27:35)
Compiler: gcc version 5.4.0 20160609 (Ubuntu 5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.10)

lshw -c video

  *-display                 
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Curacao XT / Trinidad XT [Radeon R7 370 / R9 270X/370X]
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       version: 00
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=amdgpu latency=0
       resources: irq:31 memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:fbd80000-fbdbffff ioport:d000(size=256) memory:c0000-dffff

modinfo amdgpu | grep version

version:        5.0.19.20.7

Steps taken, to reproduce hang:

• dowload Ubuntu 18.04.2 from ubuntu.com
• Erase and Clean install (one partiton, minimal install + upgrades + 3rdparty)
• amdgpu-pro (I need opencl) drivers 19.20 downloaded from their page
• Installed with ./amdgpu-pro-install -y --opencl=pal,legacy
• Reboot
• sudo snap install VLC
• Open avi file (xvid codec)
• 20 minute = screen freeze, UI dead, only sound will remain playing till the end of movie.

Questions

• What could be wrong?
• How to investigate?
• Has someone else encountered same problems with 18.04+vlc+amdgpu ?

Search effort taken

• Found this, but it is related to nvidia hardware

• Found this, but no solution was found

Temporary solution

sudo apt install mplayer mplayer-gui

This works great..

After a day of testing: Nope, it also could hang. Removing the VLC tag. Problem is somewhere in Ubuntu/Xorg/OpenGL/video drivers

Conclusions

I've found it much more convenient to use linux console for software building process, but its wet/unstable UX just've disappointed me, in its everyday/recreational use.

I just wanted to watch a movie! For a couple of days using it (I mean X.Org and ALSA) I alredy had to:

• reinstall OS/gpu drivers couple of times
• encounter dropouts/silence problems with "sound via display port"
• numerous freezes and crashes of popular software

These two technologies, that are barebones of user interaction - are real beta-versions of something, that may be ever human-usable! Random freezes, screen-flashes, sound dropouts... 2019-th? Most user-friendly desktop distro? LOL.. that wood is too raw wet, to become a good easy-to-set fire yet, guys!

On my Lenovo Thinkpad T460s with Intel HD Graphics 520 I get choppy video playback in browsers, media-players and even glxgears. There's sudden stops or jerks every 1 second or so without continuously. I had no such problems on 16.04 and KDE Neon (also 16.04 based). I see there are many questions about choppy video playback but no solutions with regards to my hardware unless I am missing something. Any idea what I can do to troubleshoot and if possible solve it.

I know VLC can do it but that stopped working :(

Can Gnome MPV do it? Can MPlayer do it?

It makes learning Tai Chi from videos soo much easier.

I'm having a bit of an annoying problem with Banshee. I have a library that's not so big, only 300-400 songs. However, I'm the problem arises when I play songs. When I double click to play a song, it plays normally, as expected. But during a playlist or my whole library, or even a playlist with a single song being played, something funny happens: It starts the next track f.ex. in the middle, but not at the beginning. Rarely at the beginning. This is quite annoying, and I don't really have an idea what may cause it. It used to work completely fine before, and I find it hard to believe that it may be a matter of a corrupted database in Banshee.

Has anyone else had this problem, and if so, is there any solution to this?

I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but I believe it'd be appropriate since I do run Ubuntu (11.10) and Banshee is the default player.