How-To Fix VLC Starts & Immediately Closes
Today my Ubuntu MATE 18.04.2 LTS got an update and it changed the way that my VLC Media Player, MPlayer, and SMPlayer behaved. When I tried to play any video file with any of these multimedia players, it would immediately start the player and then immediately close. I had to go into each of the programs preferences and make some changes. Below are the steps to fix each of the multimedia players.
How to Fix VLC
1. Open your file manager (Caja File Manager) and then click on the View menu and click on Show Hidden Files.
1. Open your file manager (Caja File Manager) and then click on the View menu and click on Show Hidden Files.
2. Double-click on the .config folder to open it.
3. Click on the vlc folder and then press the Delete button to remove the folder. Then close your file manager.
4. Open VLC Media Player. Click on Applications, hightlight Sound & Video, then click on VLC media player.
5. Click on the Tools menu and then click on Preferences.
6. When the Simple Preferences dialog box appears, click on the Videos tab or button at the top. Then change your output to OpenGL
video output.
video output.
7. Then click on the Input / Codecs tab or button at the top. Then change Hardware-accelerated decoding to Disable and then click the
Save button. Now close VLC Media Player. It should now play a video file; if it don't, keep changing Output until you find something that
works for your system (like in the image above).
Save button. Now close VLC Media Player. It should now play a video file; if it don't, keep changing Output until you find something that
works for your system (like in the image above).
8. Now VLC Media Player should have audio and video.
How to Fix MPlayer
1. Open MPlayer, right-click on the player and select Preferences.
1. Open MPlayer, right-click on the player and select Preferences.
2. Click on the Video tab when the Preferences dialog box appears. Select the driver gl_nosw OpenGL no software rendering. Click
OK and close MPlayer. The next time you open a video, it should play. Change the video driver in the Preferences window if it doesn't.
OK and close MPlayer. The next time you open a video, it should play. Change the video driver in the Preferences window if it doesn't.
3. MPlayer should now have audio and video.
How to Fix SMPlayer
1. Open SMPlayer and then click on the Options menu and select Preferences.
1. Open SMPlayer and then click on the Options menu and select Preferences.
2. Click on the Video tab when the Preferences dialog box appears. Change the Output driver to gl_nosw and click Apply.
3. Click the Audio tab and click on the Output driver to alsa and then click Apply. Then click OK and close SMPlayer.
4. SMPlayer should now play audio and video.
I hope this helped you fix your video problem if you had the same problem that I had.
Take care!
Take care!