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Background

I'm running Ubuntu 11.10 (64-bit) on a computer with an AMD E-450 APU. This chip has an integrated Radeon HD6320 graphics processor. I successfully installed the latest proprietary driver from AMD (Catalyst 12.1). I have also installed the XvBA backend for VAAPI, and confirmed that it works.

What does work

After having installed the aforementioned software, GPU acceleration in VLC works perfectly. 1080p material plays smoothly, while without GPU acceleration it was like watching a slide-show of images. So far so good.

What doesn't work

For the problem to present itself, two factors must be present.

  1. GPU acceleration must be enabled in VLC
    • And the material to be played must take advantage of it, e.g. H.264 or the like
  2. VLC must be launched from the Dash (the menu you get by pressing the Super-key in Unity)
    • Whether the program itself is launched from the Dash and the material to be played is chosen from within VLC, or the material is picked directly from within the Dash doesn't matter
    • Launching from the Unity Launcher has the same effect

If the above is true, VLC crashes 100% of the time, while if it is launched in any other way (e.g. from terminal with vlc or from Nautilus with 'Open with VLC Media Player') it never crashes.

What I have tried

  • I have installed VLC 2.0.1 from ppa:videolan/stable-daily. This did not affect the problem in any way.

  • I have made a fresh install of both Ubuntu and VLC, but the issue remains.

The Question(s)

  • Why does the application behave differently when launched from the Dash?

  • What can I do to fix the problem?

Improve this question
4
  • You didnt mention about your graphics car
    – Tachyons
    Feb 25, 2012 at 14:08
  • before someone cries about ATI being upsupported in hardware because VPDAU is nvidia proprietary, consider this on videolan-news: videolan.org/news.html -- VLC 1.1.0 and GPU decoding on ATI 2010-07-02
    – RobotHumans
    Feb 28, 2012 at 0:54
  • I changed the softlink on my install to not reference dash, but regular bash or sh on my install for various reasons. It might fix your issue, but not the bug.
    – RobotHumans
    Feb 28, 2012 at 0:56
  • This question should instead be filed as a bug report, thanks! Instructions here.
    – Jorge Castro
    Mar 17, 2012 at 17:49

1 Answer 1

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Strange, I have the AMD C50 with ATI 6350 integrated and have VLC from the ppa, in my case so far with all HD movies I am yet to see VLC crash even when launched from the Dash. What does your VAINFO return btw?

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2
  • vainfo return looks good: vainfo: VA API version: 0.32 vainfo: Driver version: Splitted-Desktop Systems XvBA backend for VA-API - 0.7.8 vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD
    – bessman
    Mar 2, 2012 at 20:32
  • Do you use the 32 or 64-bit version of Ubuntu?
    – bessman
    Mar 2, 2012 at 20:47

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