My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

VLC 2.2.2 media player Weatherwax is here

largeVLCVLC development has been fairly invisible during the last year. It took ten months since the previous 2.2.1 release to produce a new egg. Here it is finally: the next stable release. The version 2.2.2 “fixes numerous security issues, notably in the MP4, RealRtsp and Sparkle modules, but also important crashes for the MXF, ADPCM, Telextext, Skins and Qt modules. It also improves our codec support by adding new formats and providing faster decompression. More than 100 fixes for issues reported for 2.2.1” according to the release notes.

It always takes a while to compile new VLC packages; not just because I build 8 of them (two Slackware releases, two architectures and restricted/unrestricted versions) but because updates to the internal support libraries have their own little challenges when you try to compile them. Anyway, I have the packages now, and made them available here:

Rsync access is offered by the mirror server: rsync://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/restricted_slackbuilds/vlc/ .

For BluRay support, read a previous article for hints about the aacs keys that you’ll need.

I have not had time to do some thorough testing of the new release, but I surely hope that playback of H.264 video has improved. Because of the large amount of visual artifacts resulting from fast-forwarding video’s I mostly switched to mplayer for video playback on my computer.

My usual warning about patents: versions that can not only DEcode but also ENcode mp3 and aac audio can be found in my alternative repository where I keep the packages containing code that might violate stupid US software patents.

Have fun! Eric

30 Comments

  1. Gerald Morris

    BRAVO! EVERYTHING about this build excels the previous one! Better sound and video. I’d stopped using vlc 2.2.1, despairing of issues with the video. You did this one ALL the way right Eric. Take a bow.

  2. Robby

    Hi Eric, my video in 2.2.2 is broken – it only shows a portion of the screen, eg. the top left quarter – everything else is black. The video output moduloe was on auto and I’ve tried setting it to manual for a couple of options like opengl glx and vdpau but no luck. Ideas?

  3. alienbob

    Robby, are you on Slackware-current?
    There is an issue with the Qt5 interface in VLC which I configured for -current. You need to upgrade to the latest qt5 package I provide (the “4alien” build) where I fixed that.

  4. Robby

    Thanks for the tip Eric – I had actually seen that note a few days ago and had resynced my repo but it seems I may have been too much in a rush – 4alien coming down now – will give feedback shortly.

  5. rob

    Works fab, thanks a lot Eric!

  6. Helios

    I have had the same problem with vlc ( it only shows a portion of the screen). By choosing (in the video menu) “Always on top”, it works well again. It is possible to unclick it later.

  7. E. Wayne Johnson

    it does indeed require qt5 …

  8. Robby

    Thanks Eric – that did the trick!

  9. D.L.C. Burggraaff

    The build for current indeed requires qt5, but luckily the build for 14.1 – which uses qt4 – runs OK on my Slack64 current multilib.

  10. alienbob

    VLC can use either Qt4 or Qt5, which one to use is decided at build time.
    I usually compile against Qt4 because that works, but for -current I wanted to see what the new Qt5 interface brings us. That fullscreen controller bug was already reported fortunately, before I started compiling the new VLC, so I was able to have a patched qt5 package ready on time.

    Still, I would like to see feedback from people who are using VLC on slackware-current with the Qt5 interface. Are you experiencing other issues? Are you happy with the Qt5 interface? Do you prefer the Qt5 interface over the Qt4 interface?

    Building a VLC package for -current which uses Qt4 is easy: just remove Qt5 from your system and then start the compilation. After you built VLC you can re-install Qt5. VLC will still be using the Qt4 interface.

  11. D.L.C. Burggraaff

    I do not run KDE and therefore want to keep QT at its bare minumum.
    Anyway I installed qt5 and the (restricted) VLC build for Current and repeated my tests: I could not discern any differences with the VLC QT 4.8.7 build for 14.1.
    Regards, Dick

  12. alienbob

    Hi Dick, not everything using Qt is actually a KDE application 😉 Qbittorrent is another that I use a lot that has zero KDE dependency.

  13. Andersen

    I’m getting this error and vlc can’t start. System is Slackware64 -current with latest upgrade.

    [cli] lua interface error: Error loading script /usr/lib64/vlc/lua/intf/cli.luac: lua/intf/modules/host.lua:279: Interrupted.

  14. E. Wayne Johnson

    qt-5.5x is giving me fits with lots of stuff and the menus are strange in lots of apps and some dont work or dont compile… I am throwing it out and starting over with qt-4.8x for now.

  15. E. Wayne Johnson

    I will do as D.L.C. Burggraaff suggests and stay with qt-4. Too many bugs in qt-5

  16. D.L.C. Burggraaff

    As I said before the VLC QT 4.8.7 build for 14.1 runs OK under Current Multilib. However Firefox does not even list the mozilla plugin.
    So I rebuilt the new VLC for QT4. I had to install yasm, jdk and subversion + serf + apr-util + apr to do so. Firefox now listed the mozilla plugin. But that plugin turns out to be very unstable (for me?). Throwing an mpeg at it sometimes results in that mpeg being played, but in many cases a “plugin corrupt” message pops up instead.
    I then tested the VLC qt5 build for Current: the mozilla plugin shows the same instability.
    I also repackaged the VLC qt4 32-bit 14.1 build for Parted Magic: the mozilla plugin shows the same instability there as well.
    Is anyone else seeing this instability too?

  17. alienbob

    Please report the application issues you have as new bugs to the VideoLAN team.

  18. E. Wayne Johnson

    I got the 14.1-64 version installed with no Qt5. Works and sounds great. No menu issues. No doubt Qt5 is the likrly future but there is much work to be done.

  19. Andrey

    Hello Eric!
    New current VLC build even won’t start GUI in slackware64-current+multilib running XFCE:
    VLC media player 2.2.2 Weatherwax (revision 2.2.2-0-g6259d80)
    [00000000014bab68] core libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use ‘cvlc’ to use vlc without interface.
    [00000000015e4058] skins2 interface error: no suitable dialogs provider found (hint: compile the qt4 plugin, and make sure it is loaded properly)
    [00000000015e4058] skins2 interface error: cannot instantiate qt4 dialogs provider
    [00000000015e4058] [cli] lua interface: Listening on host “*console”.

  20. alienbob

    Andrey, I see you are running slackware64-current. Did you install my latest qt5 package “qt5-5.5.1-x86_64-4alien.txz”? Any older version of qt5 will be an issue for VLC.

  21. Jack

    After installing QT5 on Current64 I get problems with KDE notifications and Amarok crashing. After removing QT5 they work again.

  22. Andrey

    Thank you Eric,
    I have no qt5 on my installation. I fall back to vlc from 14.1 branch.

  23. cwizardone

    Good Evening, Alien Bob.
    This morning, my time, I did a fresh installation of -current from and .iso dated today, 27 March 2016.
    After installing VLC, I find it won’t fire up and issues this message,
    ****************
    bash-4.3$ vlc
    VLC media player 2.2.2 Weatherwax (revision 2.2.2-0-g6259d80)
    Inconsistency detected by ld.so: dl-open.c: 677: _dl_open: Assertion `_dl_debug_initialize (0, args.nsid)->r_state == RT_CONSISTENT’ failed!
    bash-4.3$
    *********************
    Any thoughts?
    Thanks.

  24. alienbob

    No idea, works fine here on -current. However, my computer is up to date until "Sat Mar 26 23:20:34 UTC 2016" i.e. I miss one update that you applied.

    $ vlc
    VLC media player 2.2.2 Weatherwax (revision 2.2.2-0-g6259d80)
    [00000000010be9b8] core libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use ‘cvlc’ to use vlc without interface.

  25. alienbob

    cwizardone, I updated to the latest "Sun Mar 27 19:39:10 UTC 2016" and vlc still starts up and works normally.
    This is my laptop with Plasma5 installed.

  26. cwizardone

    Thanks for taking the time to look into it. Unfortunately, I just tried it again and received the same error as before. Don’t know what could be causing it, but as long as SMPlayer works, and it does, I’m not without a media player.
    Thanks, again. Oh, and belated Happy Easter.
    🙂
    (Still Sunday here).

  27. cwizardone

    OK. Ran strace on vlc and it was missing libwayland. So, I installed wayland-1.9.0 from your kde5 dependencies and, voila, VLC fired right up.
    So, I guess, while qt5 has been removed as a dependencies, wayland is still required.

  28. alienbob

    I’ll start a compilation of vlc-2.2.2 for Slackware64-current when I get the chance, to get rid of the unwanted deps.

  29. lleroy

    it looks like libdvdcss for 14.2 was overlooked: it’s not in the place linked to from the message above.

  30. alienbob

    lleroy I will fix that. Thanks.

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