Bug 523366 – media-video/vlc-2.1.x and vlc-2.2.x - vlc hangs intermittently while playing 1080-mkv file - main input error: ES_OUT_SET_(GROUP_)PCR is called too late (pts_delay increased to 2000 ms)

• Status: VERIFIED UPSTREAM
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Thomas 2014-09-21 12:41:36 UTC]

This has been discussed elsewhere (searching for "ES_OUT_SET_(GROUP_)PCR  is called too late" yields a few disussions on various platforms, but no solutions.

When playing HD-mkvs, vlc 2.1.x does not display the video smoothly.  2.1.0 - 2.1.4 show artefacts, 2.1.5 hangs and drops frames:

[0x7f684d84ece8] main input error: ES_OUT_SET_(GROUP_)PCR  is called too late (pts_delay increased to 2000 ms)
[0x7f684d84ece8] main input error: ES_OUT_RESET_PCR called

This is independent from the decoding method:

[0x7f681c010db8] avcodec decoder: Using NVIDIA VDPAU Driver Shared Library  340.32  Tue Aug  5 20:35:32 PDT 2014 for hardware decoding.

[0x7f9ec4c034a8] avcodec decoder: Using VA API version 0.35 for hardware decoding.

or using no hardware decoding at all does not make any difference.

This seems to be related to audio, however, because this does not occur when audio is discarded.

vlc 2.0.9 and below works fine, but they cannot be built officially any longer (see next bug).

[Comment 1 Thomas 2014-09-21 12:43:29 UTC]

Created attachment 385230 [details]
emerge --info

[Comment 2 Thomas 2014-09-21 13:04:56 UTC]

Some discussion about is, it seems to be a matter of direct alsa output:
https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/10422

[Comment 3 Paweł Stankowski 2015-02-21 01:07:50 UTC]

*** Bug 530094 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Comment 4 Nick Andrade 2015-04-11 08:59:34 UTC]

Upstream has a commit that may be worth trying: 4aeccbd7667c65bd278111a26c2aab088bc60a20.  The diff applies relatively clean to 2.2.0.  Do you have a link to a clip that can be used as a test case?

[Comment 5 Anton Bolshakov 2015-04-12 04:51:17 UTC]

I tried 4aeccbd7667c65bd278111a26c2aab088bc60a20 with my private videos. It did not fix the problem.

The only solution is the abovementioned vlc-2.1.0-alsa-stuttering workaround

[Comment 6 Ian Delaney (RETIRED) 2015-04-18 04:07:58 UTC]

*vlc-2.2.9999 (10 Nov 2014)

  10 Nov 2014; Yixun Lan <[e-mail]> -vlc-2.0.5.ebuild,
  -vlc-2.0.7.ebuild, -vlc-2.0.8.ebuild, -vlc-2.0.8a.ebuild, -vlc-2.0.9.ebuild,
  -vlc-2.0.9999.ebuild, -vlc-2.1.0.ebuild

purged from portage

[Comment 7 Anton Bolshakov 2015-04-18 05:25:11 UTC]

how exactly it is obsolete if even the upstream bug is not fixed?..

[Comment 8 Thomas 2015-05-15 12:58:16 UTC]

The problem still persists in current versions of vlc and is not obsolete yet.

[Comment 9 BT 2015-11-12 04:48:14 UTC]

The upstream bug has been marked as fixed. The fix[1] is only available in git master. After installing vlc-9999, I can confirm that the issue has been fixed for me.

[1] http://git.videolan.org/gitweb.cgi?p=vlc.git;a=commit;h=6ae2905ef7fbc7de3a3a4a1bdf8ad6df46ce570a

[Comment 10 Anton Bolshakov 2015-12-14 03:12:10 UTC]

Created attachment 419142 [details, diff]
vlc-2.2.1-alsa-stuttering.patch

I backported the upstream patch to the current stable (2.2.1-r1) version. Drop it to the /etc/portage/patches/media-video/vlc folder and run "emerge -1 vlc"

[Comment 11 Anton Bolshakov 2016-08-01 01:55:19 UTC]

Somehow, vlc-2.2.4 still has this problem. 

However, somebody removed epatch_user option and I can't patch it myself. Please put it back.

[Comment 12 Nick Andrade 2016-08-01 05:40:33 UTC]

(In reply to Anton Bolshakov from comment #11)
> Somehow, vlc-2.2.4 still has this problem. 
> 
> However, somebody removed epatch_user option and I can't patch it myself.
> Please put it back.

VLC has been updated to EAPI=6 which inherently has epatch_user.  The attached patch needs to be slightly modified to work with it.  I'll attach a modified version of the patch in a sec (it still applies cleanly).

[Comment 13 Nick Andrade 2016-08-01 06:04:13 UTC]

Created attachment 442144 [details, diff]
vlc-2.2.4-alsa-stuttering.patch

Slightly updated version of the previous patch to work with EAPI=6.

If this patch works and corrects the bug, please confirm and I'll work with a Dev to get it into Portage.

[Comment 14 Luke Bratch 2016-08-21 17:56:11 UTC]

(In reply to Nick Andrade from comment #13)
> If this patch works and corrects the bug, please confirm and I'll work with
> a Dev to get it into Portage.

It does indeed work with vlc-2.2.4 and fixes this bug.  Thanks very much.

[Comment 15 BT 2017-03-12 03:05:23 UTC]

I believe this issue has been fixed in bug #594126. I built vlc-2.2.4-r1 without the patch, and I no longer experience this issue. Can anyone else confirm?

[Comment 16 Luke Bratch 2017-03-12 13:03:42 UTC]

Can confirm, vlc-2.2.4-r1 is good without a separate patch.