[SOLVED] Video playback problems on 23.10

[parkD]

Hello. I am trying to install Kubuntu 23.10 on a new machine with an NVIDIA GTX1650. This is a dual-boot with Windows 11. Plasma version is 5.27.8. The install went fine, but at some point I tried to play videos and could not. For example, an .mp4 would not play at all in the default player (Haruna) but would would play without sound in VLC. YouTube videos in Firefox would play about two frames and then stop with a spinning disk, as if it was buffering. I spent a few hours trying to figure this out, but could not. I fired up the install media and videos played fine in the Live version. After more googling and jacking around, I blew away the Kubuntu partition and re-installed from scratch. As soon as the install was complete, I tested video playback and all was good. So I set about "moving into" this new system and spent a few hours installing my favorite programs, setting up the environment and transferring files from my old computer. Then I wanted to watch a YouTube video and... SAME PROBLEM! The video played for 1/2 second and froze with a spinning circle. A sample MP4 causes Haruna to freeze with a black screen and VLC to crash immediately. Booting into Windows 11, everything works fine.

Is there some known issue with 23.10 and video playback? I can't think of anything I did during my "move in" that would affect video playback. I don't think setting up email accounts in Thunderbird or installing office type programs would break the system in this way. Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Schwarzer Kater]

Welcome.

Did you try to sudo apt install kubuntu-restricted-extras in the Konsole terminal emulator for additional multimedia support?

PS: And did you choose to install the "third-party software for additional media format" during the initial installation process?

[Snowhog]

You can check to see if you have the package kubuntu-restricted-extras installed. If you don't, install it.

[TinyTim]

Here: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/manti...se-notes/35534
Known limitations:

• Requires TPM 2.0.
• Only a limited set of hardware is supported.
• No external kernel-modules support. For example, no support of NVIDIA graphics cards.

[claydoh]

Here: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/manti...se-notes/35534
Known limitations:

• Requires TPM 2.0.
• Only a limited set of hardware is supported.
• No external kernel-modules support. For example, no support of NVIDIA graphics cards.

A bit out of context, as this applies specifically to this:

Starting with Ubuntu 23.10, TPM-backed full-disk encryption (FDE) is introduced as an experimental feature

The limitations you show are specific to using this for full disk encryption.

[TinyTim]

A bit out of context, as this applies specifically to this:
The limitations you show are specific to using this for full disk encryption.

Thank you, when I miss the mark, should this be deleted so it is not distracting?

[claydoh]

That is up to you. No harm or foul here.

[parkD]

I have done more investigation and have narrowed this down to running Squeezelite (a Logitech Media Server music player). I am able to run it on my current system (22.10) at startup without any issues, but on the new (23.10) system it seems to interfere with audio playback on other applications. Has the audio backend changed since 22.10?

[claydoh]

It could be, or the software needs updating or something else specific to this release.
Or the way you are running it might need to be adjusted?

Hers is their issue tracker: https://github.com/ralph-irving/squeezelite/issues?q=

You might need to try a more current version, if you are using this directly from Ubuntu's repos, perhaps.

[parkD]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. It turns out that Squeezelite was holding the audio output device open preventing other processes from accessing it. Enabling a switch to close the output device after a couple of seconds has solved my problem. Thanks again.