Linux video (mp4) playback not working properly.

[henrik7]

I can duplicate the behavior on two separate Mac's and it appears on both Centos 6.4 (x64) and Scientific Linux 6.4 (x64) based VM's. I am using Fusion 6.0.2 on a Mavericks based Mac and latest VMWare tools are installed.

I am trying to display a mp4 video (H.264 / AVC, Mpeg-4 AAC audio). When I try to display/view the video the audio works, but the video is black. I can forward and rewind, but nothing displays. I do not believe this is due to a missing codec since I do not get an error message about a missing codec. Also the behavior using the Linux "totem" video player and "vlc" are the same --- audio present, video is a black screen. If I take a snapshot of the "black" video screen (from within vlc), the snapshot image displays proper video content. So the decoding of the video stream appears to be happening, the video itself is just not displayed by the video player running inside the VM.

Is this a known problem? Any ideas what I need to do to fix this video display issue?

Thanks,

      - Henrik

[koi]

This sounds consistent with what I would expect from something going wrong with video acceleration. Try toggling that (Settings > Display > Accelerate 3D Graphics).

FWIW my mp4s (DVD rips I've made myself) work fine on my setup (Ubuntu guests, somewhere around 12.04-13.10) in both VLC and Movie Player (I haven't tried others). In my case video acceleration is on and I'm still on an old version of Fusion (haven't gotten around to updating yet), but have no reason to expect this would make a difference.

If none of that helps, please link to a (short) clip that demonstrates your problem.

[henrik7]

Thank you for you reply. I am running SL 6.4 (RHEL 6.4 based) which uses Kernel 2.6.32-358.23.2.el6.x86_64 (it has back-ported features from newer kernels). The option to accelerate 3D graphics is on, but Fusion 6 states it requires Linux kernel 3.2.0+ and Mesa3D 8.0.0+ (SL 6.4 has Mesa 9.0.0+). The video under VLC or any other video program I use does not work. Note that 3D GL graphics do work.  Also, I can and did install Kernel 3.12 to test the issue and video in Kernel 3.12.1 behaves the same way - sound and black screen.

Interestingly, I can play video just fine with I use Chrome to do so (Chrome can act as a stand-along video player). Firefox which can also act as a video player, does not work. Same issue as with VLC - black screen, but sound is present.

Frankly, I think it has to do with the video overlay functionality of the VM graphics driver. Also, *I think* this used to work on earlier versions of Fusion, but have not tested this explicitly.

   - Henrik

[rfishel]

I can confirm henrik7's issue as well. I am running Fusion 6.0.2 on Mavericks 10.9.1 with a vanilla install of Centos 6.4. I've installed gstreamer 0.10.35 over the Centos provided 0.10.29 and ran into the same issue of sound being available and a blank video box while gst-launch.

I then installed an identical Centos installation using VirtualBox 4.3.6 r91406 and executed the same pipeline as on the Fusion install and was able to both hear and see the video. This appears to be a bug with a VMWare Fusion component(s) that affects video playback.

[henrik7]

The issue is definitively present. In addition to VIrtuaBox, It also works just fine (the video playback) in Parallels 10, but not on Fusion 6.

At the top of this post it says "Assumes answered". The issue has not been answered! I do not how to fix the "Assumed Answered" setting.

It is annoying, as best as I can tell, that VMWare/Fusion appears not to acknowledge this easily repeatable issue.

   - Henrik

[rfishel]

I was wondering if you had set that status on this thread!

I agree that no one seems to be looking into this bug. I tried to open a support ticket for Fusion 6, but my license is through my company and not individual, so it doesn't show up on my VMWare account. Any chance you have an individual license and can open a ticket?

[henrik7]

I have opened a support request on this matter.I will post any interesting information here.

   - Henrik

[RJIn]

If you are using vlc..

Try...

To get sound I did as advised:

1. Tools > Preferences > Video
2. Uncheck Accelerated video output (Overlay).

To get video:

1. Tools > Preferences > Video
2. Change video output to X11 video output (XCB).

[rfishel]

VLC doesn't work on my system as I am using a newer version of Gstreamer than what it's looking for. As was mentioned above, all functionality works as expected using VirtualBox. This is definitely a bug with VMWare Fusion.

[RJIn]

Hi rfishel,

I got this answer from open forum so thought of sharing it.

(VLC on CentOS 6 always shows black screen - Super User)

I am using Cent OS 6.5 and this workaround helped in going.

It could be the issue  but I am not sure because I got this answer in SU link above.

ty

[henrik7]

Thank you to VMWare support for finding a work around that enables VLC to play mp4's in Fusion 6.0. The solution by Rjin works for me. It does not, however, address the issue:

• When displaying the video on native hardware (no VM) or Parallels or VirtualBox it works just fine in VLC. Overlay support does not need to be disabled.
• When displaying the video on native hardware (no VM) on Parallels or VirtualBox using gstreamer based video players like Totem Movie player (GNOME) or Dragon Player (KDE) the video work fine. They do not work under Fusion 6.0

So, it appears the Fusion 6 overlay functionality is not properly working. A work-around is good, and I appreciate that it was found and relayed to me, but it is not a solution to the underlying problem which can appear in other programs.

There seems to be some question on installing gstreamer codecs to test the issue. The following should install all needed codecs for testing purposes (totem and dragon):

          rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

          rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/updates/6/i386/rpmfusion-free-release-6-1.noarch.rpm

          yum install gstreamer-plugins-good gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-plugins-bad-free gstreamer-ffmpeg

          yum install totem   # gnome video player

          yum install kdemultimedia  # kde media player

(you do not need all of these for mp4). At this point the KDE and GNOME video players will play the sound, but not the video.

     -- Henrik

[henrik7]

I've been informed that VMWare has been able to duplicate the issue and they are "waiting on senior engineers". I hope this means they intend to fix the problem.

BTW, I am giving to understand the issue appears to be present in VMWare workstation for Windows as well.

   - Henrik

[VinceEAI]

This fix DID work for me!

CentOS-6.5-x86_64,

VM 10.0.1 build-1379776

Thank  you.

[KumarLande]

Hey Henrik,

It looks like a header update changed the video code and was not updated appropriately. This happened during version 11.0.3 and 12.0.0 and only effects distros not using the new kernel driver.

On 6.6 version it works fine. You can try it out it works.

Cheers..