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    Video preview not working after dist-upgrade (though i can hear the audio)

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    • flag
      flag last edited by

      RaspberryPi3B+ and latest RetroPie image: everything was working fine, until i decided to update the underlying Raspbian image (you know, security fixes, etc) via the usual apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade and reboot.

      Now in Emulstation, for the MAME roms (placed in the Arcade rom directory in my case) i don't see the video preview being played anymore (while it was working before the update), instead an empty black box is displayed, but i know that the video is being played because i can hear the sound/music/audio fx.

      So, my feeling is that the update borked one of the library being used by Emulstation to play the video (because it's emulstation that plays the video and not an external process, right? i didn't enable the OMX player FWIW) and i'm looking for a log file, or some kind of 'verbose' mode so that i can see if any error is being spit out.

      Here is es_log.txt: http://paste.debian.net/1053204/ and here es_settings.cfg: http://paste.debian.net/1053205/

      Any idea?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • mitu
        mitu Global Moderator last edited by

        Seems to be a problem after the latest update which upgraded the VLC version. Try turning on the HW accelerated video player in the Emulationstation menu, this will switch off VLC.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • flag
          flag last edited by flag

          The OMX player? It never worked - i saw the "Use HW acceleration" description so i tried it long ago, but it never worked at all (no video and no audio).

          BTW, i just tried to remove Emulationstation and reinstall it from source (hoping it would compile against the new libraries and fix this erratic behaviour) but no, same bug, i can hear the audio being played while no video is being displayed.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • flag
            flag last edited by

            Ok, after downgrading vlc from 3.0.3-1-0+deb9u1+rpt1 to 3.0.3-1-0+deb9u1 i got my video back again - just in case someone hits the same bug.

            Rion brimby 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote -1
            • Rion
              Rion @flag last edited by

              @flag said in Video preview not working after dist-upgrade (though i can hear the audio):

              Ok, after downgrading vlc from 3.0.3-1-0+deb9u1+rpt1 to 3.0.3-1-0+deb9u1 i got my video back again - just in case someone hits the same bug.

              From my understanding this has to do with the newly released VLC 3.0 with hardware acceleration.

              More info here

              FBNeo rom filtering
              Mame2003 Arcade Bezels
              Fba Arcade Bezels
              Fba NeoGeo Bezels

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • brimby
                brimby @flag last edited by

                @flag would you be so kind as to post the commands for downgrading vlc? I'm having a similar issue after updating Raspbian.

                flag 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • flag
                  flag @brimby last edited by

                  @brimby i manually removed all vlc packages, and then reinstalled the previous version, one by one:

                  To get a list of vlc packages:

                  $ dpkg -l | grep vlc
                  ...

                  To remove a specific package:

                  $ sudo dpkg -P $packagename

                  To install a package with that particular version:

                  $ sudo apt-get install $package=3.0.3-1-0+deb9u1

                  This is my situation at the moment, and video preview work again:

                  $ dpkg -l | grep vlc
                  ii libvlc-bin:armhf 3.0.3-1-0+deb9u1 armhf tools for VLC's base library
                  ii libvlc5:armhf 3.0.3-1-0+deb9u1+rpt1 armhf multimedia player and streamer library
                  ii libvlccore9:armhf 3.0.3-1-0+deb9u1+rpt1 armhf base library for VLC and its modules
                  ii vlc-bin 3.0.3-1-0+deb9u1 armhf binaries from VLC
                  ii vlc-data 3.0.3-1-0+deb9u1 all Common data for VLC
                  ii vlc-plugin-base:armhf 3.0.3-1-0+deb9u1 armhf multimedia player and streamer (base plugins)
                  ii vlc-plugin-video-output:armhf 3.0.3-1-0+deb9u1 armhf multimedia player and streamer (video output plugins)

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • mitu
                    mitu Global Moderator last edited by

                    Seems like a bug in the new HW accelerated MMAL decoder. I've submitted a bug report with a test case, let's see what happens next.

                    5schatten 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • 5schatten
                      5schatten @mitu last edited by

                      @mitu can you post a link of your bug report?

                      mitu 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • mitu
                        mitu Global Moderator @5schatten last edited by

                        @5schatten Sure - https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=227948. The RPI packages are not yet updated though, so the fix is not included in the latest vlc versions.

                        5schatten 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • 5schatten
                          5schatten @mitu last edited by 5schatten

                          @mitu well that's not a problem for me since I build it from the source so I was wondering if I can stumble uppon a recent patch set. VLC 3.0.5 was released yesterday but still has the same swapped / inverted colors.

                          mitu 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • mitu
                            mitu Global Moderator @5schatten last edited by mitu

                            @5schatten As I said, the patches for the Raspbian version of VLC (that contains the new MMAL decoder/X11 splitter) that have this corrected are not released yet. If you build your own packages from source, then you can skip the patch added by the RPF guys.

                            5schatten 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • 5schatten
                              5schatten @mitu last edited by 5schatten

                              @mitu I'm aware of this patch set https://github.com/RPi-Distro/vlc/commit/8ba628d62d80fcbebc873bbc4f29e5fa8eaabb15 & included them im my build https://github.com/5schatten/LibreELEC.tv/commit/ce30954944c8fac1590b52b668066ba66961acd9 but then again this is afaik raspbian specific since upstream VLC's MMAL implementation is broken for me and I just get a black/blank video output.
                              Well I guess I interpreted this sentence wrong "The person working on VLC has a couple of patches that appear to make RGBA work correctly" I thought he's refering to the VLC project not to the guy who wrote the raspbian patch.

                              0 XECDesign committed to RPi-Distro/vlc
                              Enable MMAL support
                              0 SupervisedThinking committed to 5schatten/LibreELEC.tv
                              vlc: added MMAL support patches for RPi
                              
                              https://github.com/RPi-Distro/vlc/commit/8ba628d62d80fcbebc873bbc4f29e5fa8eaabb15
                              mitu 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • mitu
                                mitu Global Moderator @5schatten last edited by

                                @5schatten said in Video preview not working after dist-upgrade (though i can hear the audio):

                                I thought he's refering to the VLC project not to the guy who wrote the raspbian patch.

                                No, the VLC 'vanilla' doesn't have this problem, it's the MMAL/X11 splitter patch that seems to have introduced it.

                                5schatten 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • 5schatten
                                  5schatten @mitu last edited by 5schatten

                                  @mitu vanilla has no video output at all for me. ES video previews works for AML S905 & generic Intel systems fine though so it's some kind of messed up RPi implementation. I've tried 3.0.3 / 3.0.4 & the recent 3.0.5. None works without the MMAL patches on RPi but all other builds work fine, of course RPi works only with messed up colors but it's better than nothing.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • 5schatten
                                    5schatten last edited by

                                    @mitu since more than a month has passed have you any news about an updated MMAL patch from the devs from the raspberrypi forum?

                                    mitu 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • mitu
                                      mitu Global Moderator @5schatten last edited by

                                      @5schatten No, the forum post is my only contact with them.

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                      • 5schatten
                                        5schatten last edited by

                                        too bad but thanks anyway :-)

                                        mitu 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • mitu
                                          mitu Global Moderator @5schatten last edited by

                                          @5schatten I think the latest VLC update on Raspbian fixed the inverted colors problem. I'm not sure if wasn't the firmware that was also updated that contributed to the fix, but seems to work fine now.

                                          5schatten 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • 5schatten
                                            5schatten @mitu last edited by

                                            @mitu said in Video preview not working after dist-upgrade (though i can hear the audio):

                                            @5schatten I think the latest VLC update on Raspbian fixed the inverted colors problem. I'm not sure if wasn't the firmware that was also updated that contributed to the fix, but seems to work fine now.

                                            This new patchset resolved the problems for me :-) https://github.com/RPi-Distro/vlc/commit/837804c5eb6ff127bb5a3f41c9ce9ed64b6db3b6

                                            0 XECDesign committed to RPi-Distro/vlc
                                            New MMAL patch
                                            mha 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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