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I'm rather new to Linux. Running Xubuntu, currently up-to-date. Opening the mp4s with Parole Media Player gives me a ("lined-out") image where you can't see anything.... kind of like a video on a VCR when the recording gets very messed up. The audio, however, comes out perfect and smooth.

On VLC watching the same video I get a good image, but it is extremely choppy, where you have seconds of delay in between frames. A lot of the time, an image will stay on the screen for seconds while the audio continues. Again, the audio is perfect and smooth.

Can anybody please help me out? I appreciate it!

Matt Di Micelli
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2 Answers2

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For Parole, you should install the various suggested gstreamer plugins pacakages gstreamer1.0-libav, gstreamer1.0-vaapi, gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad and gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly, and hopefully that fixes the missing video playback.

For VLC, open Tools > Preferences and switch to the Video tab and change the Display Output drop down from Automatic to something else and see which one works for you.

If VLC isn't playing perfectly out of the box, it sounds like possibly your graphics driver isn't working as it should. If you have an NVidia graphics card and are using the open source graphics driver, you may want to consider switch to the proprietary graphics drivers in the 'Additional Drivers' app.

Jay Philips
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  • Thanks for taking the time to help me out! I ended up going into the VLC preferences and like you said, changing the Display Output got things working for me! – Matt Di Micelli Mar 12 '21 at 21:08
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Either your video file has a resolution too big for the power of your PC (4k is hard to play on older machines), or the specific format gives delays (different video formats at the same resolution/similar bitrate will play smoother or not), so you might need a different codec (better playback) or video driver (better performance).

First try with other video files (lower resolution).

Otherwise a proprietary codec might get you a better playback. Search for such codecs from the Software and updates app. see this link

Anyway if your laptop is older and the generic video driver can't be good enough, you're out of luck.

Dan
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