Thanks for the reply.
I also installed the 9.6 version of VLC to eliminate that as a possibility.
I cannot play any video I tried. I'll update Ruby on the 10.4 system and see what that does and then I'll change the log level and send you the output if I'm still seeing problems.

If I understand this correctly the server ought to be doing some transcoding. If so then it definitely was not as VLC had 0 process percent.

Anyway I'll contact with logs later