VLC crashing with some H265 video files.

[bleep42]

Hi,
I have a few H265 Videos that are crashing VLC. This is using a Pi4, Latest updated Raspbian.
Link to a 2 minute sample https://www.dropbox.com/s/42tqvsmfy5hxr ... 1.mkv?dl=0
They are low resolution and used to play fine. They will just about play using Kodie under Raspbian, but are very blocky and distorted, and eventually Kodi will lock up.
All other higher resolution H265 play well.
Would be greatful if someone could take a look.
Thanks, Kevin.

[tvjon]

ffplay,
mplayer

play your clip fine. No artifacts, & lip synch' as far as I can tell on a short clip.

VLC quits immediately, so running command line version says why:

[b3f08c18] mmal_avcodec decoder: Looking for HEVC decoder 'hevc'
Assertion geo.height_y >= video_height && geo.height_c >= video_height / 2 failed at src/libavcodec/rpi_zc.c:509
Aborted

Maybe whoever is currently writing Pi mod's for v3.0.8 can help there?

HTH

[bleep42]

Hi,
Who do I need to report this to to get it resolved?
Regards, Kevin

[Rascas]

It plays just fine in Kodi on Raspbian on a RPi 4 here. It is a very low resolution file (640x272) so it is normal to be blocky, but it plays just as good as my laptop.

[bleep42]

Hi, and what about VLC?
I realise 640 resolution is going to be blocky, but this is very distorted, there is even a solid grey bar of blocks along the top of the screen, before it dies, this is with Kodi running under Raspbian, on Pi4 not stand alone Kodi?
Regardless of quality/resolution it should not crash VLC.
Regards Kevin.

[Rascas]

Well it was working fine on both Kodi and VLC, but I didn't update my Pi 4 for more than 1 month. Just updated it, and I can confirm that now VLC crashes and Kodi doesn't play it well, a grey bar appears as you said. It is most likely a kernel/firmware bug again as Kodi version is the same, not sure about VLC.

[Rascas]

Updated kernel/firmware using rpi-update tool and the problem still exists. Other HEVC videos (higher resolution) that I use to test Kodi play fine. That's something the Raspberry Pi devs should take a look.

If you downgrade kernel/firmware using rpi-update tool to commit 8bb38ef0267ab09d5ff6f2c3b48fff44cb69ade8 from Jan 10, it works fine again on both Kodi and VLC.

[bleep42]

Updated kernel/firmware using rpi-update tool and the problem still exists. Other HEVC videos (higher resolution) that I use to test Kodi play fine. That's something the Raspberry Pi devs should take a look.

If you downgrade kernel/firmware using rpi-update tool to commit 8bb38ef0267ab09d5ff6f2c3b48fff44cb69ade8 from Jan 10, it works fine again on both Kodi and VLC.

Ok, so we now know there is a problem with the kernel/firmware, so we need to flag this up somehow, none of the Devs seem to be looking at this thread, Popcornmix? James? 6by9?....
Regards,
Kevin.

[jamesh]

To get official attention you need to add a bug to our issue tracker - I suspect the firmware one is the best bet for this.

[bleep42]

Issue raised on GitHub.
https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/3492

[Lewis-H]

Same problem for me of course - VLC 3.0.3 crashes soon after starting playing an h.265 encoded file. These files were made by me using Handbrake and work fine on VLC 2.x and on my Apple TV running Infuse so I am confident the files are ok.

[jamesh]

See the github issue for current progress - looks like we have found the issue.

[bleep42]

The exact kernel version where the problem starts is 30th Jan 1526192.
So the Previous version 22nd Jan 993F475 is the last version that worked ok.
Regards, Kevin.