Is VLC video player just trash, or am I doing something wrong?

**ajgreeny** · January 22nd, 2021

I am mystified still by this thread.

Did you have the snap version of VLC installed or the .deb repository version?
What version of VLC was that and which version of Ubuntu are you using?

I do not normally use VLC for audio, preferring the lower resource use of audacious, and reserving VLC for videos. However if I use VLC for audio files (of any type) it plays without problem and always fully closes when I use the X at top right of the window.

I do not use snaps at all and have removed snap-store from my system but I have no idea if snap-store has anything to do with your problem.

**CelticWarrior** · January 23rd, 2021

VLC always worked for me before and always behaved as expected when closing, no matter the way it was closed. But recently I've noticed that sometimes - it has nothing to do with the way it was closed, unlike what the OP reported -, randomly, its process seems to be stuck and an icon persists. Usually it opens another one and another one after that, keeping a sort of christmas tree lights in the tray with multiple orange cones. What I usually do is to kill the misbehaving processes.

Why this is happening I don't know. Here are the facts:
It happens regardless of the version, snap or deb.
It happens regardless of the way it is closed.
It's random, it can be OK for days and then get back to misbehaving on close.

**ajgreeny** · January 23rd, 2021

I have VLC settings to open one instance only; I wonder if this setting might make any difference to this problem?

**scottbomb** · January 23rd, 2021

VLC has been acting up on my living room PC lately, so bad I've uninstalled it and started using Dragon Player (though I'm on the hunt for a video player where I can permanently disable subtitles). Anyhow, if it runs at all, after about a minute it seems to get stuck on a frame while the audio continues and the video consist of 2 or 3 frames rapidly repeating. It works fine on the other PCs in the house so who knows? The living room PC does drive 3 monitors so maybe that has something to do with it. I still blame VLC over the video card or anything else because Dragon Player plays the same videos just fine.