VLC Broken - Is There a Workaround?

[MtnDewManiac]

So I'm trying to use Mint 19.3 Xfce, attempting to mangle myself enough to fit the ruination the Xfce developers apparently think of as "progress," when I realize I've had enough for a while and decide to take a break and watch a video. I mount my hard drive, use Thunar to pick out one of the ones that I'm pretty sure is still readable, right-click it (19.3 is defaulting to some weird, stripped-out video player that appears to have approximately two features) and select VLC, and start to watch. Whoops, I picked the wrong video. No worries, I'll just left-click on the Stop button and-- there is no and, because when I clicked on the stop button, VLC completely went away! I did the same thing - and with a different video - to make sure I hadn't merely suffered some sort of freak brain seizure... thing that caused me to accidentally exit the program and then lose all memory of having done so. Nope, it's a bug, and it's repeatable.

As it IS repeatable (and not merely "if you try hard enough," but as in "that's just how it is"), I assume that lots of others have encountered this VLC bug. If so, has anyone figured out some kind of workaround to get us by until Clem updates the version of VLC in our repositories to the fixed version of VLC? There has to be one; after all, this kind of problem would have had dozens, possibly even hundreds of people all rushing to file bug reports the first time they ran the broken version, right? So smarter people than me (and ones with undamaged and still-agile minds) must have tried to figure out a way to get the thing to stop treating its own "STOP" button as a power switch.

Has anyone managed to do so? If so, can you explain to me EXACTLY how to do it, please?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: The version of VLC that is broken on my system is 3.08 Vietnam.

Oh, and "extra points" if you'll explain to me EXACTLY how to remove that "Celluloid" thing from my system so that it doesn't show up in my right-click menu and I don't even need to use that right-click menu because, when I double-left-click on a video or audio file, it just runs VLC and plays it. I'm hoping to be "moving" to the SSD that I received recently soon, so I'd be happy to completely uninstall Celluloid from my system, as the SSD is only 240-gig, so I need to embrace a "barebones mentality," I suppose, and start learning how to remove everything that I cannot envision ever willingly using. But I'm worried that just uninstalling it won't remove its hooks from Thunar, and that I'll have a crash of some sort every time I double-left-click on a media file out of reflex. It takes me a lot of effort and time to teach my brain to stop doing a thing and start doing a different thing, so that situation would be the same as my current one - bad. Thanks again!

[ZakGordon]

...Whoops, I picked the wrong video. No worries, I'll just left-click on the Stop button and-- there is no and, because when I clicked on the stop button, VLC completely went away!

EDIT: The version of VLC that is broken on my system is 3.08 Vietnam.

OK well i was curious and as my version is also 3.08 (Vetinari) i did what you did, but it did not close the program down as it did for you. It just stops the DVD being played and dumps me on the default open(blank) VLC screen.

I'm happily using Mint 19.1 XFCE. Did you change a behaviour in VLC preferences perhaps?

[MtnDewManiac]

Huh. No, it's a new installation of Mint 19.3. I don't have any DVDs or CDs (or even a working optical drive, at this point) to test it in the way that you use it. Would you do me a favor and use Thunar (or whatever file manager you use) to select an audio or video file (not a DVD) and run VLC on it that way? If so, does VLC still remain after you select "Stop?"

[pbear]

VLC 3.0.8 works fine for me also. Stop closes the play window, but not the app. Clicking play opens the window again and restarts playback.

[all41]

I just checked this out also--no problems at all.
Something is wonky with your vlc configs.
Open your home folder and show hidden files, then open .config.
Find the vlc folder and delete it (it will get freshly generated when you reopen vlc).
Then you will have fresh out of the box vlc configs---retry your videos

[makita]

Can't help with VLC but would highly recommend testing that "Celluloid" thing before throwing it away.
After you play with Celluloid, open terminal and type:

Code: Select all

sudo apt remove vlc

[all41]

Can't help with VLC but would highly recommend testing that "Celluloid" thing before throwing it away.

I kind of agree with @makita regarding Celluloid, was strange at first--but lately I have been liking it.
The only downside is that is has a problem showing dvd menus which vlc handles perfectly