VLC won't play from command line

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

Attempting to play videos from the command line opens a blank video window. Statistics show frames being decoded but nothing is displayed. Note that vlc reports "No plugins found", see following:

$ vlc /Volumes/Theatre/Mythical/1051_20130721000000.mpg 
VLC media player 2.1.0 Rincewind (revision 2.1.0-0-gedd8835)
[0x100315650] main libvlc error: No plugins found! Check your VLC installation.

$ vlc /Volumes/Theatre/MythVideos/Super_8/title00.mkv 
VLC media player 2.1.0 Rincewind (revision 2.1.0-0-gedd8835)
[0x100315650] main libvlc error: No plugins found! Check your VLC installation.

$ vlc --list
VLC media player 2.1.0 Rincewind (revision 2.1.0-0-gedd8835)
  main                   main program

$ vlc --list-verbose
VLC media player 2.1.0 Rincewind (revision 2.1.0-0-gedd8835)
  main                   main program

$ vlc --version
VLC media player 2.1.0 Rincewind (revision 2.1.0-0-gedd8835)
VLC version 2.1.0 Rincewind (2.1.0-0-gedd8835)
Compiled by macports on CT-MBP11.local (Dec  6 2013 20:27:28)
Compiler: clang: warning: argument unused during compilation: '-isysroot /'
This program comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
You may redistribute it under the terms of the GNU General Public License;
see the file named COPYING for details.
Written by the VideoLAN team; see the AUTHORS file.

$ sw_vers
ProductName:	Mac OS X
ProductVersion:	10.6.8
BuildVersion:	10K549

Primarily tested with mpeg2 files (recorded by MythTV from an HDHomerun, North American broadcast OTA.)

Note that the .mkv file above WILL play OK if opened from within the vlc.app. The .mpg files do NOT play either way. I can try to make samples available but the files are huge and my upload speed is limited.

Note that I have updated to pick up the fix in ​https://trac.macports.org/ticket/41640

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

Got the following error message:

Warning: The ticket has been created, but an error occurred while sending notifications: [Errno -2] Name or service not known

Could someone with commit rights please see that jeremyhu@… gets this? Thanks.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Replying to ctreleaven@…:

Got the following error message:

Warning: The ticket has been created, but an error occurred while sending notifications: [Errno -2] Name or service not known

Could someone with commit rights please see that jeremyhu@… gets this? Thanks.

Yes, we are having trouble with Trac. It has been reported to the administrators.

[jeremyhu (Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia)]

Yeah, the VLC ports are mainly or the app. It doesn't work from the command line, but it probably could with some tweaking ... (patches welcome ;>)

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

I'll try the -quartz variant. BTW, I used egall's port-depcheck.sh and found that VLC linked with all sorts of stuff on my system that configure was set to disable:

$ /Users/craigtreleaven/MacPortsTemp/port_utils/port-depcheck.sh vlc
--- /var/folders/-A/-Ac1IVy2H9WLW1x5c9D7XU+++TI/-Tmp-//port-depcheck.sh.2013EST2.PhC65h	2013-12-09 16:05:20.000000000 -0500
+++ /var/folders/-A/-Ac1IVy2H9WLW1x5c9D7XU+++TI/-Tmp-//port-depcheck.sh.2013EST1.45maKu	2013-12-09 16:05:15.000000000 -0500
@@ -1,50 +1,69 @@
 BGHUDAppKit                     
+VLC
+XviD
 a52dec                          
-autoconf                        
-automake                        
 avahi                           
-clang-3.3                       
+bzip2
+dirac  
 faad2                           
 ffmpeg                          
 flac                            
 fluidsynth                      
 fontconfig                      
 freetype                        
+gettext
+glib2
+gmp
 gnutls                          
-jpeg                            
+jack
 lame                            
+libass
 libbluray                       
 libcddb                         
-libcdio                         
 libdc1394                       
 libdca                          
 libdvdnav                       
 libdvdread                      
-libebml                         
 libgcrypt                       
-libid3tag                       
+libgpg-error
+libiconv
+libidn
 libmad                          
-libmatroska                     
 libmodplug                      
 libmpcdec                       
 libmpeg2                        
 libogg                          
 libopus                         
 libpng                          
-libproxy                        
 libsamplerate                   
+libsdl
+libsndfile
 libssh2                         
 libtheora                       
-libtool                         
 libupnp                         
+libusb
 libvorbis                       
 libxml2                         
 lua                             
 ncurses                         
+nettle
 openjpeg15                      
-pkgconfig                       
+openssl
+orc
+p11-kit
+portaudio
+readline
+schroedinger
+speex
 taglib                          
-tiff                            
 twolame                         
 x264                            
+xorg-libX11
+xorg-libXau
+xorg-libXdmcp
+xorg-libXext
+xorg-libXrandr
+xorg-libxcb
+xrender
 xz                              
+zlib
Output a diff file to /var/folders/-A/-Ac1IVy2H9WLW1x5c9D7XU+++TI/-Tmp-//vlc-deps.2013EST.diff

I wonder if the x* stuff is the reason I'm not getting video output. You want want to add conflicts_build for some of the major ones if VLC isn't going to obey configure args.

If I come up with any useful patches, I'll post them. ;)

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

My initial interest was because MacPort's VLC wouldn't play mpeg2 transport streams. It still won't and I don't see why not. Anyway, I ended up doing a substantial revision to VLC. I noticed that the default install of ffmpeg included a number of libraries that VLC then disabled or provided via variants. Since they're 'free', why not make these features part of the default install? I know it is a lot to review, but:

1) Updated to version 2.1.2. 2.1.3 was released yesterday but isn't in the downloads directory yet...

2) Deleted freetype patch as it is now incorporated in base. Updated sparkle patch.

3) Eliminated configure args no longer recognized: --disable-telepathy, --enable-libproxy. Corrected configure args: --disable-smb should be disable-smbclient; --disable-qt4 should be disable-qt.

4) Added dependencies identified by port-depcheck.sh as being directly linked by vlc. Added other dependencies and enabled in configure: dirac, fontconfig, freetype, libass, libmodplug, libmpcdec, libsdl, schroedinger, speex, fribidi. Eliminated variants: osd, mod, mpc, speex, fribidi, libsdl.

5) Disabled fluidsynth by default and added to jack variant. Jack is a dependency for fluidsynth so including fluidsynth caused jack to be built and then ignored!

6) Eliminated --with-macosx-sdk=/ as it causes a flood of warnings and seems to add no value (10.6.8, at least).

7) Changed post-destroot so that Frameworks and libs aren't deleted. Put copy of plugins.dat into Contents/MacOS/plugins so that '/Applications/MacPorts/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -lv' works without error.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

Completely new patch that makes all the same changes as in comment 5, except:

-Updates to version 2.1.3 -Eliminates DVB and EyeTV variants in favour of making them defaults. The oh-so-obscurely-named "DVB" variant actually allows MPEG2 transports streams to play--which was the original problem I wanted to solve.

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

replaces previous patch

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

BTW, I found that setting the environment variable 'VLC_PLUGIN_PATH=/opt/local/lib/vlc/plugins' gets past the "No plugins found!" error when running /opt/local/bin/vlc.

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

New patch fixes minor boo-boo in the previous version: we only want to enable speex; not both enable and disable it! ;)

Feb22_01 replaces previous patches.

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

Replaces previous patches

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

I submitted an update for the HDHomerun gui app and macsforever2000 was good enough to commit it immediately. See ​https://trac.macports.org/ticket/42592

That app wants to use VLC to play video but needs this update to work. Can we get this committed?

[jeremyhu (Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia)]

This is a very large patch and I don't have too much time to look at it at the moment.

Could you please provide a patch against VLC-devel instead? I'd feel more comfortable pushing a big change there first and then pushing it to VLC if I don't get cries of broken from users.

[jeremyhu (Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia)]

You also don't need to say "# extra deps found by port-depcheck.sh " ... just include them.

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

I'll look into the patch against -devel in a day or two...have to be away.

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

Patch against vlc-devel

[ctreleaven (Craig Treleaven)]

As requested, a patch against vlc-devel. Hope this is OK.

This change eliminates many of the variants that the port has provided in the past. Going forward, I'm not sure the smb, svg and vcd variants are necessary--could make them all part of the default config. In turn, this would make the full and huge variants pretty much obsolete. I suppose these latter two would need to be retained for compatibility purposes for some period of time (1-2 years?). Does this make sense?

[jeremyhu (Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia)]

That wasn't really what I was looking for. It looks like you've just made a diff between VLC-devel and your updated VLC. I was asking for you to apply your changes to VLC-devel (ie, don't downgrade it from master to 2.1.3) ... but I think I've merged the two and am testing it out now. Assuming it looks good, I'll commit and then test with a more recent commit.

[jeremyhu (Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia)]

r117408

[cooljeanius (Eric Gallager)]

Cc Me!

[jeremyhu (Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia)]

And updated to current git in r117415