OS: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE5 Plasma.
VLC Version: 3.0.8 Vetinari.

I am aware that this might not be the right place to post this, but I am at a loss at what what is exactly responsible for this behavior, TW, KDE or VLC. I have been searching in OpenSUSE and VLC forums to no avails so I decided to post here.

What I want to do:

I am trying to play the video files which are shared on a NAS via SMB share on my OpenSUSE Tumbleweed laptop with VLC in place, as in straight from the shared location, just like I can with the Windows machines on the same network using the VLC for windows.

What Happens:

Instead of playing the file in place, the VLC (Or dolphin, I am not sure on this) first downloads the files to a local cache folder (~/user/.cache/kioexec/krun/) and then plays the file. This is sometimes a lengthy process as some of the files are huge, 80+ Gigabytes.

This is what happens when I double click on the file in the shared location on the network. Opening the VLC, and browsing over to the file using the Open File feature fails to open the file altogether with a "SMB error: open failed (Invalid Argument)".

As I previously mentioned the VLC for Windows installed on the windows machines of the same network works just fine playing the same files, regardless of their size, straight from the NAS.

Any help is very much appreciated.

I think the problem is that you try to play through an smb connection, which is a bit of a bottleneck.

this is something i need help with too.
kubuntu 19.4/19.10 would play files off a nas "out of the box" (confirmed via fresh reinstall of 19.10) via smb and sftp in vlc (with the usr/pass set) but 20.04 insists on copying to local machine i have 3 identical machines 2x media players 1 x desktop use, all hp t610 repurposed thin clients running kubuntu of course .
i am still trying to find a fix for this on other forums but decided to post this here as a food for thought item to help narrow down the issue

My answer still stands, playing video through smb is a bottleneck and doesn't work, I usually download to a local storage folder what I want to play. It works fine for audio, though.

Hello,

Late reply, same problem....

Imho, it's not smb being the bottleneck:

I have just migrated one of my PCs from Linux Mint 19.3 Mate & Cinnamon to Kubuntu 20.4 (KDE, with VLC 3.0.92 Vetinari pre-installed).

VLC in Kubuntu won't play my media collection off my SMB NAS - it creates an error, but won't even cache it.

The same smb NAS files can easily be played without fault from my various Linux Mint computers - without any delay, lag or problem, since years - even at the highest resolution and HD quality (no external media server involved - just double-click on a media file in the file browser, it will open VLC and play).

Btw, on the same NAS volume I have an NFS share, which works in Kubuntu / VLC after I have mounted it.

Sadly, NFS is not an option for my smb media share, since I need the SMB protocol to share it to several other non-NFS capable systems (Kodi on Android TV / Mediabox, Totalcommander on Android Smartphones, Windows 10 and of course Linux).

Did anyone here find a solution to get VLC to play media files off an SMB share in an Kubuntu / KDE environment?

It clearly works in all Linux Mint flavours (Tested on VLC 3.0.8 Vetinari on Mint 18.3 & 19.3 in Cinnamon, Mate and xfce desktop env.).

Question is, what could be the root cause for this problem?

- VLC as shipped in Kubuntu?
- Kubuntu / Dolphin (I really like this file browser, one of the main reasons I migrated in the first place...)
- Ubuntu base (highly doubt it, MInt is basically the same undercarriage)?
- Handling SMB logins over to VLC in KDE Dolphin?

Thanks for any hints & tips to get VLC to play my SMB NAS files!

Hi there,

my two cents:

- it doesn't work neither in KDE NEON

- it has nothing to do with smb as such, since MANY other distros play files from smb w/o any issues, and w/o the need to create a local copy in the first place. I think the reason lies in the interplay of dolphin, smb and some "intermediate stuff" (kio mappings???) that is going on behind the scenes.

I don't have a solution, but a little by-pass that you can use in case you are also bugged with this issue:

It seems that dolphin makes use of some mappings provided by kio whenever you are dealing with smb addresses: when you have mapped a smb address to dolphin's so-called "places", either by going through dolphin's network tab or by defining the smb address by hand, somebody (who?) creates a soft (?) link in /run/user/1000/kio-fuse-<something>/smb/, where the "something" seems to be a temporary and dynamic internal string. For example, the address smb://nas326/extern/Filme/ will be made available through /run/user/1000/kio-fuse-BcMIAy/smb/nas326/extern/Filme/ (for example).

Funnily, you can perfectly navigate dolphin to that other "local" directory and have vlc play your file w/o issues, while it always does not work with the exact same thing accessed through the smb address.

Maybe someone more technical than I can explain this and help to find a real solution

Best,

thn