7

After some uptime (quite randomly, it can happen after 2 days or an hour), videos on my computer start to freeze. There's no error messages, any video playback just stops like its on pause, though you can navigate through video frames via progress bar or arrow keys.

As far as I now this occurs in every video player:

  • Firefox and Chromium
  • VLC
  • mplayer
  • Totem

After reboot, everything is OK for some time.

System:    Kernel: 5.11.0-40-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A Desktop: Gnome 3.36.9 
           Distro: Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS (Focal Fossa) 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: Dell product: G7 7700 v: N/A serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Dell model: 06YKK0 v: A00 serial: <filter> UEFI: Dell v: 1.5.0 date: 10/23/2020 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 78.4 Wh condition: 78.4/97.0 Wh (81%) model: BYD DELL XYCW00A status: Full 
CPU:       Topology: 6-Core model: Intel Core i7-10750H bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: N/A L2 cache: 12.0 MiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 62399 
           Speed: 900 MHz min/max: 800/5000 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 3799 2: 3549 3: 1570 4: 3782 5: 2481 6: 1447 7: 1097 
           8: 900 9: 900 10: 900 11: 900 12: 900 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 
           Device-2: NVIDIA vendor: Dell driver: nvidia v: 460.91.03 bus ID: 01:00.0 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: modesetting,nvidia unloaded: fbdev,nouveau,vesa 
           resolution: 1920x1080~144Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: GeForce RTX 2070/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 460.91.03 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Comet Lake PCH cAVS vendor: Dell driver: sof-audio-pci bus ID: 00:1f.3 
           Device-2: NVIDIA TU106 High Definition Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.1 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.11.0-40-generic 
Network:   Device-1: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 vendor: Bigfoot Networks driver: iwlwifi v: kernel port: 5000 bus ID: 00:14.3 
           IF: wlp0s20f3 state: up mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Realtek vendor: Dell driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 3b:00.0 
           IF: enp59s0 state: down mac: <filter> 
           IF-ID-1: br-24d6c5dc8ee5 state: down mac: <filter> 
           IF-ID-2: br-8aa82a8a8e13 state: down mac: <filter> 
           IF-ID-3: docker0 state: down mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 476.94 GiB used: 431.01 GiB (90.4%) 
           ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 model: KBG40ZNS512G NVMe KIOXIA 512GB size: 476.94 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 466.30 GiB used: 430.53 GiB (92.3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-1 
           ID-2: /boot size: 704.5 MiB used: 484.9 MiB (68.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 980.0 MiB used: 3.5 MiB (0.4%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-2 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 46.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 47 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A

Update: I've forgot about this inquiry for quite some time, nevertheless I want to share my insights regarding this problem.

Turns out the issue was only with Bluetooth devices, my guess is that audio subsystem is getting stuck due to not being able to play the audio stream on the preferred device.

Although all answers from below are correct and might do the trick for you, possibly, you can also just restart the Bluetooth service (in Ubuntu simply systemctl restart bluetooth).

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
3

As seen here on AskUbuntu: Ubuntu's stopped playing music/video files & Youtube

This line worked for me:

killall pulseaudio; rm -r ~/.config/pulse/*

but some need additionally to run

pulseaudio -k

after a short while and restart it.

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2

Issues like this are sometimes caused by hardware acceleration bugs. Try turning off hardware acceleration in either Firefox or Chromium and see if you still experience this issue.

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2
  • It also fails in VLC and all other media players. Is there another work around?
    – Jakobovski
    Commented Jul 3, 2022 at 11:42
  • Having the same issue, verbatim. Since upgrading to Ubuntu 22 LTS. No error message, nothing.
    – Jortstek
    Commented Aug 26, 2022 at 19:33
2

I had the same issue but neither killing pulseaudio nor disabling hardware acceleration worked for me. On the other hand, killing pipewire and pipewire-media-session did the trick.

So, long story short, if killing pulseaudio doesn't work for you too, just try to kill pipewire and pipewire-media-session.

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