#1057053 Blank video when playing AV1 encoded videos

Package:
vlc
Source:
vlc
Description:
multimedia player and streamer
Submitter:
Andreas Messer
Date:
2026-08-30 23:45:03 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1057053#5
Date:
2023-11-28 20:27:12 UTC
From:
To:
When playing an AV1 encoded video from webm file, video display is blank
and only audio is working. It seems to me that vlc tries hw acceleration
via VDPAU although my card does not support AV1 hardware decoding. VLC
should fall back to software decoding in this case. (It works properly if
I disable hardware acceleration entirely in vlc)

Please find command line output below:

$ vlc Optimistic\ Delay.webm
VLC media player 3.0.20 Vetinari (revision 3.0.20-0-g6f0d0ab126b)
[00005578b3e71520] main libvlc: VLC wird mit dem Standard-Interface ausgeführt. Benutzen Sie 'cvlc', um VLC ohne Interface zu verwenden.
[00007f3408004930] gl gl: Initialized libplacebo v4.208.0 (API v208)
libva info: VA-API version 1.17.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_17
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
[00007f34082550e0] gl gl: Initialized libplacebo v4.208.0 (API v208)
[00007f3404c1b580] avcodec decoder: Using G3DVL VDPAU Driver Shared Library version 1.0 for hardware decoding
[00007f3404c1b580] main decoder error: buffer deadlock prevented

$ vdpauinfo | grep AV1
AV1_MAIN                       --- not supported ---
AV1_HIGH                       --- not supported ---
AV1_PROFESSIONAL               --- not supported ---

Best regards,
Andreas Messer
#1057053#10
Date:
2025-04-13 18:21:32 UTC
From:
To:
I'm having the same issue. Manually backporting VLC from testing a la
https://wiki.debian.org/SimpleBackportCreation did not solve the issue
for me.
#1057053#15
Date:
2025-09-10 19:08:13 UTC
From:
To:
I am also experiencing this issue on 3.0.21-10 on Debian Trixie and 3.0.21-11 on Debian Forky. Both are AMD64 machines; the Trixie machine has a Renoir APU, while the Forky machine has a Polaris GPU, neither of which support hardware AV1 decoding.

A workaround I found is to go into All Settings, then go to “Input / Codecs”/Video codecs and add dav1d to the preferred decoders list. This forces software decoding for just AV1 while hardware decoding can still be left on for other codecs.

I built the master (v4) and 3.0.x branch of upstream VLC from source, and this issue doesn’t appear. I tracked down the fix to this commit: code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/commit/74de0fda0bec6507ba1e305f7943150140f9dc44

This basically just disables hardware decoding for AV1 on non-Windows platforms. I created a patch with the modifications and built a new package on it, and sure enough, AV1 decoding was working with completely default settings.

I might try and get this fix into the package; however, I want to see if hardware AV1 decoding works on hardware that actually supports it, as this patch would remove a feature for those users for no good reason. If a maintainer has such hardware, I’d like to see that tested. Otherwise, I might just try to find a friend who has the right hardware.
#1057053#20
Date:
2026-08-30 23:33:14 UTC
From:
To:
-- 
Hello,

We hope this message finds you in good health.

This is the Foundation of Mr. Cheng Saephan. You have been selected to
become part of his shared blessing.

Warm regards,
Sandra Anderson
Cheng Saephan Foundation