Bizarre. I never had any problems with mpv (the closest being the lack of UI, initially, but it has just enough, and everything else can be dealt with in the configuration file, or with a lua script if you need to go that far to get what you want). VLC, on the other hand, holy fucking shit. I remember trying it when I still used Windows, and then going back to Media Player Classic. It's a lot heavier, the screen kept getting all gray and fucked up. Not sure if I even used it on Linux. I think I used mplayer initially, and then mpv, and mpv is basically the successor to mplayer. Maybe try mplayer. It's not updated anymore, I think, but it should work. Maybe an older version of mpv would work as well, though you can't use that on updooter distributions, so you would have to use Guix or Nix or Gobo or Carbs or maybe Gentoo, or whatever else allows you to use more than one version of a program. I guess even an appimage could do the job, maybe try that.