I installed VLC using DNF, which is RPM. When I play a video over Samba using VLC, it can take a minute to play. On F43 and I believe that VLC is on the same version, the time I double click the file it plays instantly. I’ve tried using Flatpak (Flathub and Fedora), the VLC Flathub can play the file instantly but the sound is a bit lower than the RPM version, so I choose to use the RPM version. Any solution?
here’s the VLC version
❯ vlc --version
VLC media player 3.0.23 Vetinari (revision 3.0.23-2-0-g79128878dd)
VLC version 3.0.23 Vetinari (3.0.23-2-0-g79128878dd)
Compiled by mockbuild on 7af706f7c391472fb092764527b88fbf (Apr 17 2026 00:00:00)
Compiler: gcc version 16.0.1 20260321 (Red Hat 16.0.1-0) (GCC)
This program comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
You may redistribute it under the terms of the GNU General Public License;
see the file named COPYING for details.
Written by the VideoLAN team; see the AUTHORS file.
~
❯ flatpak run org.videolan.VLC --version
VLC media player 3.0.23 Vetinari (revision 3.0.23-2-0-g79128878dd)
VLC version 3.0.23 Vetinari (3.0.23-2-0-g79128878dd)
Compiled by flatbld on d0cae1adb4ee (Nov 11 2011 11:11:11)
Compiler: gcc version 15.2.0 (GCC)
This program comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
You may redistribute it under the terms of the GNU General Public License;
see the file named COPYING for details.
Written by the VideoLAN team; see the AUTHORS file.
One very noticeable difference between those is the version of gcc used for compiling. Other than that the info you provide is not significantly different.
The dates seem to indicate the flatpak probably was built for f43 while the rpm was built explicitly for f44. There have been changes in gcc itself.
Also, I must ask if you have installed all the needed codecs to allow the rpm version to use the media files properly?
Same issue here, Fedora 44, VLC 3.0.23 from the Discover software center. Takes 20 seconds to open a mkv file from a Truenas SMB share. The same file opens in 4 seconds locally. On Windows, it opens nearly instantly.
(VLC 3.0.23 from F44’s repo; same build info as mentioned by OP.)
Playing a 4K MKV (h.265) with VLC over SMB (Samba) via the SMB plugin, a mounted SMB share, and local filesystem (tmpfs), the differences starting playback were almost unnoticeable (less than 1 second slower start over SMB; all started in less than 2 seconds).
If I were to guess, maybe it’s the Samba configuration on the NAS when paired with the newer Samba libraries in F44?
I don’t know if this happens because of newer Samba libs, because this happened when I updated to F44. Today I just got a Samba libs update, from 2:4.24.1-1.FC44 to 2:4.24.2-1.FC44. I found something: if I run VLC using CLI vlc smb://<address>/<files> it plays instantly.
I play video from a mounted Samba share on Nautilus, just a normal double click.
If I open that mounted Samba share on terminal and run pwd, it shows /run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share:server=192.168.1.3,share=movie/<files>. And using VLC CLI on that folder, which does not use smb://, the starting playback is the same as double clicking it on Nautilus.
The biggest difference between smb:// and gvfs is that the latter uses FUSE, so there’s quite a bit of extra overhead while moving bits around.
I would start by repeating the same tests with mpv to see if it’s the same issue as with VLC. If it is, run some benchmark tests to see what the I/O throughput is across that gvfs mount.
I’m not experiencing any noticeable delayed video playback when I start a video via Nautilus or cvlc on the mounted path, but my NAS is a DIY rig optimized for serving up files and streaming media (it’s powered by a dual-core CPU from 2011, so not relying on raw horsepower).
I’ve tried using Celluloid, which is an MPV-based player, the video plays instantly using Nautilus mounted Samba. But, I don’t want switch and configure another app just to play a video. This video file also plays on Android TV with Samba using Nova Player, and the video play instantly.
Interesting, so it’s back to the combination of VLC and your NAS…
Understandable, but depending on what’s causing the delayed playback, you might need to switch to a different app, use smb:// instead of a mounted share, use NFS instead of SMB, or stream over HTTP (which would work fine for VLC, Nova Player, etc. and also be more efficient than SMB).
Now that you know the problem only affects VLC when paired with a mounted SMB share, crank up debugging mode in VLC and see what it says during the minute or so while video playback is delayed.
Be sure to repeat the process with different video containers (e.g. MKV, MP4), with/without subtitles, etc.
You’ve got issue(s) with settings, buffering/caching, subtitles, and/or something else that affects your setup while the same version of VLC with my NAS has no issues.
(Note, I found user posts on other forums with similar questions about delayed starts when playing videos with VLC over a mounted SMB share on other Linux distros and also Windows, so it’s not a Fedora-specific issue.)
Go to Preference – input/codecs – hardware-accelerated decoding and automatic change to disable. After you save changes close vlc reopen and try with that option to run videos for smb share drive.
I tried with MP4 without subtitles, and it plays instantly. But MKV with subtitles is delayed
maybe, but I never touched my VLC settings that much other than preferred subtitle, subtitle size, and pause_click plugin. And this happened after I updated to F44, I’ve used mounted Samba since F40 and it worked really fine.
Is what you found a recent issue? Because I just experienced this, everything worked smoothly since F40.
Fedora 44 is currently on version 2.2.1 of TagLib (https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/taglib/taglib/). TabLib 2.3.2 just went into testing for F45 about 23 minutes ago (as I write this), so it probably won’t be long before F44 does the same.