[Bug]: No video playback on linux

[dmitsuki]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Contact Details

No response

Version Info

Compiled from develop

What operating system are you seeing the problem on?

Linux (any distro)

Bug Behavior

No videos play on Linux. Currently on arch linux. All you get is a black screen, regardless of in game settings. Running through wine you get the expected behavior.

Expected Behavior

Video plays with song

Reproduction Steps

Run the game on linux, either from the provided binaries, or compiled from source

Anything else?

No response

[MandL27]

Reproduced on 0.74.4 on Bazzite 42, both natively and from an Arch distrobox.

Logs don't have anything that immediately jumps out to me; in fact they were completely silent between 21:33:31 (began file) and 21:34:53 (quit).

[hubret]

after doing some ai assisted digging (since i am new here), i found that this is caused by ffmpeg not being linked on linux pre-2022 due to not having a compiled library for linux. the bundled ffmpeg is v2.1.3 from 2014, for windows 32 bit. (theres also a 64 bit lib with unknown version, but unsure if it works) #1046 (comment)

the lib files end with .dll.a because this ffmpeg build's target was windows 32 bit. unsure if they actually would have worked on linux.

ive tested with system ffmpeg libs, and i got bg video to work after updating the api to v4.0+ in MovieTexture_FFMpeg, since it was last using the api of the bundled 32 bit ffmpeg (unsure about if 64 bit version would work)

ffmpeg has had autobuilds (listed on its official website) since march 2024, so IIUC we can use these without building ffmpeg from source for each platform.

so bundled libs just need to be updated and separated into platform specific lib sets. the CMakeLists can select libs based on the values of WIN32, APPLE, and UNIX.

and if these are updated, DirectShow implementation (and Null) is maybe not needed?

EDIT: it seems like some of the new ffmpeg .so files are too big to be pushed through without LFS.

cc @bluebandit21

[bluebandit21]

Hey, I'm so sorry to take so long to respond to this, been busy with IRL stuff and haven't been very active with Etterna development for a while here.

I'd have to double-check the CMake we use to include ffmpeg on Linux builds, I think #1046 probably has details on that in the discussion, though it's again been ages since I last looked at that 😵‍💫

ive tested with system ffmpeg libs, and i got bg video to work after updating the api to v4.0+ in MovieTexture_FFMpeg, since it was last using the api of the bundled 32 bit ffmpeg (unsure about if 64 bit version would work)

is pretty interesting to me -- are you saying that you modified the game's source to be compatible with a newer version of FFMPEG, modified the CMake to have Etterna dynamically link to system ffmpeg libraries rather than whatever we distribute with the game right now, and that fixed the problem?

Would love to chat further here or in the developer discord https://discord.gg/ZqpUjsJ to discuss further / assist you with making a PR with your fixes if you were interested :)

[hubret]

yeah, thats how i got it to work locally. checking for system libs in the linux cmake helper worked:

# FFMpeg support for video playback
find_package(PkgConfig QUIET)
if(PKG_CONFIG_FOUND)
    pkg_check_modules(AVCODEC QUIET libavcodec)
    pkg_check_modules(AVFORMAT QUIET libavformat)
    pkg_check_modules(AVUTIL QUIET libavutil)
    pkg_check_modules(SWSCALE QUIET libswscale)
    
    if(AVCODEC_FOUND AND AVFORMAT_FOUND AND AVUTIL_FOUND AND SWSCALE_FOUND)
        set(HAS_FFMPEG TRUE)
        message(STATUS "FFMpeg found - video playback enabled")
    else()
        message(WARNING "FFMpeg not found - video playback disabled. Install libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev")
    endif()
endif()

...

# Link FFMpeg if available
if(HAS_FFMPEG)
    target_link_libraries(Etterna PRIVATE ${AVCODEC_LIBRARIES} ${AVFORMAT_LIBRARIES} ${AVUTIL_LIBRARIES} ${SWSCALE_LIBRARIES})
    target_include_directories(Etterna PRIVATE ${AVCODEC_INCLUDE_DIRS} ${AVFORMAT_INCLUDE_DIRS} ${AVUTIL_INCLUDE_DIRS} ${SWSCALE_INCLUDE_DIRS})
endif()

and then I modified the ffmpeg api to use this newer version.

after that, I tried bundling those new ffmpeg builds in, by adding them into extern/ffmpeg/linux/x64, and using the CMakeLists.txt to point at them, which seems to work but is much less stable.

Edit: looks like the "instability" is being caused by trying to exit the video decode loop early, i.e. when the audio is over but the video isnt.

this build sometimes crashes after playing a chart with a video bg, maybe due to differences in video EOF handling (or how it handles corrupted files, if my video file is slightly bad) between the autobuild and my linux dev package.

lib	7:6.1.1-3ubuntu5	bundled (Feb 6 2026)
libavutil	58. 29.100 / 58. 29.100	60. 24.100
libavcodec	60. 31.102 / 60. 31.102	62. 23.103
libavformat	60. 16.100 / 60. 16.100	62. 8.102
libavdevice	60. 3.100 / 60. 3.100	62. 2.100
libavfilter	9. 12.100 / 9. 12.100	11. 12.100
libswscale	7. 5.100 / 7. 5.100	9. 3.100
libswresample	4. 12.100 / 4. 12.100	6. 2.100
libpostproc	57. 3.100 / 57. 3.100	n/a

another issue is that some of the new ffmpeg libraries are >100mb in size, so i cant commit them to my fork.

i then tried the libraries from ~2024, which should be the same version as my system libs, but that breaks video playback, without any obvious cause or extra log output.

i can continue to test if it looks like im heading in the right direction.

[poco0317]

it sounds like staying with building ffmpeg is the best way to continue updating it