VLC Black Screen: Fix VLC Not Showing Videos on Windows

If you VLC Media Player, you might have experienced a VLC Black screen issue. When you see this screen, you can still hear the audio from the video but nothing shows. In some cases, the screen will instead be greenish or have a different colour but no video footage.

In today’s short tutorial, we will be telling you how to fix VLC Not showing videos on Windows but just a black screen. This issue is common but many still cannot get it fixed.

Why you get a VLC Black Screen when trying to watch a video

There are many possible reasons for which you can get this black screen error while playing a video with VLC. Here are some of the major reasons for causing the VLC not playing video errors.

• There can be some issues with the VLC media player or its coding scheme.
• The video file could be missing its header or any other metal component.
• Chances are that the file you are using could be corrupted or damaged.
• If you have downloaded the file, then it can have a missing component.
• The file can have missing audio or video as well.
• The location where the video has been stored could be corrupted.
• A video editor, online converter, or any other application could have damaged the video.
• The file can have missing or dropped frames caused by incomplete downloading or transferring of videos.
• A system component or setting could be blocking your video from getting played in the usual way.
• Display drivers incompatibility

Here, we will be focusing on the case where the video file isn’t corrupted and you can actually play it using other video players or open using a web browser like Opera.

Fix VLC Black Screen issue

If we assume our video file isn’t corrupted and our Windows computer is up to date. One key element that will cause the video to play but show a black screen with VLC is the display driver.

I for one have experienced this on many computers and just recently, after changing the Windows OS of my HP 2000 Notebook PC to Win 8.1 64Bbits. I could hear the audio coming from the video but all I got was a black screen.

Using Oprera brower, I could play the video fwithout issues and after unistalling the display drivers, video played just fine.

So, in order to fix the VLC Black screen issue when video file isn’t corrupted, you can either:

Fix display drivers compatibility issue

In some cases, the problem is with your computer display drivers. You might have a display driver that isn’t compatible with certain video outputs. In this case, you can check for the best driver for your computer or try updating the system to get the best-optimised video drivers.

Fix VLC Black Screen issue – best practice

Although the issue might be related to the display drivers, the key solution still lies within the VLC Player. VLC uses some default settings that might cause the video to show a black screen. To fix this, proceed as thus:

• Launch the VLC Media player and then go to Tools > Preferences

• While in Preferences, select the “Video” tab and select “OpenGL video output” from the “Output” dropdown as the video output option. Save the settings

• Finally, disable Hardware-accelerated decoding under the “Input/codecs” tab.

• After performing the above changes, save and restart VLC.
• Try playing the same video again. It should now show without issue.

You can download VLC from here.