Report bugs
Contents
Reporting a bug
If you find any bugs, or if you experience any crashes, then we would very much like to hear about the issue. Here are some detailed information on how to submit useful bug reports.
Follow the bugs policy.
Is it truly a new bug?
It may sound strange, but many of the bug reports we get are not really bugs at all, or have been know for months, and/or already fixed.
Please check the following:
Version
Are you using the latest version of VLC? Bug reports on older versions of VLC are likely to be ignored, because changes in the program may make it impossible to reproduce the bug, or may even have fixed it. Always make sure the issue you want to report is still present in the current version of VLC.
Preferences
Have you tried resetting your preferences and restarting VLC yet? Old preferences and/or incorrect settings are common causes of problems.
Read the FAQ for details on how to do this (Uninstalling VLC does not remove its old settings). Double check that your issue still exists afterward.
Features
Some things are simply NOT supported by VLC. We have a list of supported features and a list of things we would like to implement in the future. If your suggestion is not on this list, you might want to make a feature request in the Requests Forum, to ask the developers to support this. Remember that we all do this in our spare time. There is no timeline whatsoever for the implementation of these enhancements and we do not make ANY promises as to when we will add them to VLC, if ever. If you really want something right now, you had best implement it yourself. Join us on the Developers Corner
Closed bugs
Many bugs are already known. Sometimes they are already fixed for the next version of VLC. Please search the list of known and fixed issues. If you find your issue, see if it is already closed. The page of the issue will then show something like:
Ticket #87 (Closed: fixed)
Still a bug?
So you still think you found a bug? Great!
Search
Search on this wiki and on the forums and see if someone else has asked a similar question or has seen a similar bug.
Forum
Ask about your problem in the relevant forum and make sure to include as much information as possible (see the pointers below). You can also describe your problem on the relevant mailing list.
Enter the bug in trac
If you are sure that you found a bug and that you have all information needed, you can enter a bug in our Trac system. You will need to register here to enter a bug. Don't forget to enter a valid e-mail address if you want to receive notifications when your bug is handled.
Give a report
When you post on the forum, email us or enter a bug report, please provide as much information as possible in your report. We try to answer all your mails, posts and reports, but there are so many that sometimes we simply don't have the time to do so. The more sound details you provide about your issue, the better the chance that we will investigate it fully.
All the details are on VLC report page.
Please gather the following information and send it along with your report:
- Email with a valid reply address, so we can get back to you with possible additional questions.
- Your operating system and the version.
- Your VLC media player version.
- The hardware you use. Make sure to name all the audio and video hardware in question that might be related to VLC's usage.
For instance: iMac G4 or Pentium4 with GeForce3, with an external USB dolby surround output device.
- The exact situation in which the problem occurred. Please describe in as much detail as possible.
- Can you always reproduce the problem in a certain way?
- The type of movie you were playing. And whether or not the issue is present on other types of movies.
- If possible, the video sample in question:
If the issue is specific to a certain movie, it can help a lot if we have the movie itself. In this case please upload as much of the file as you can to our FTP samples server. Give the file a distinct name, and upload a text file with the same name in which you again describe the problem. Report this upload in your forum posting and tell us the name of your file. This makes sure we can more easily find back your sample.
Additional remarks
If you can, or if it applies to you try to take into account the following.
Windows users
You can send along the last VLC crash log. The file is called Crashdump. If you are familiar with gdb, you can use it to give us more detailed crash info. Tutorial for GDB with Win32
If your bug is a crash, please try to reproduce and report using a -debug build.
Mac OS X users
Please send along the last part of ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/VLC.crash.log if you can. Many crashes of VLC are logged in this file. You can open the file from VLC by going to the menu Window and choosing Messages. Now click the "Open CrashLog" button. Please make sure you send the last crash (at the bottom of the file) and that it actually is the crash you described. The Date/Time field reports the time of the crash so that way you can check if it is the crash you experienced, or an earlier one.
Compile problems
Make sure you have read the Developers_Corner. Give the full log showing the problem
./configure <options> > logfile.txt 2>&1 make 2>&1 > logfile.txt 2>&1
- When dealing with a ./configure issue, please provide the generated config.log file.
- Your compiler brand and version may be relevant here as well.
Version
Written by Derk-Jan Hartman, for the VideoLAN Team.
Adapted by Jean-Baptiste Kempf for this wiki.
