VDPAU errors in VLC with official nVidia drivers installed

Question

Playback seems fine until I try seeking the video, then I get this error over and over in the terminal:

[00007fba4906ef78] avcodec decoder: Using NVIDIA VDPAU Driver Shared Library  343.36  Mon Dec  1 15:53:25 PST 2014 for hardware decoding.
[00007fba4906ef78] avcodec decoder: Using NVIDIA VDPAU Driver Shared Library  343.36  Mon Dec  1 15:53:25 PST 2014 for hardware decoding.
video surface destruction failure: The display was pre-empted, or a fatal error occurred.
[00007fba2c000a58] vdpau_avcodec generic error: video surface creation failure: An invalid handle value was provided.
[00007fba4906ef78] avcodec decoder error: hardware acceleration picture allocation failed
[h264 @ 0x7fba490e0aa0] decode_slice_header error
[h264 @ 0x7fba490e0aa0] no frame!
video surface destruction failure: An invalid handle value was provided.
[00007fba2c000a58] vdpau_avcodec generic error: video surface creation failure: An invalid handle value was provided.
[00007fba4906ef78] avcodec decoder error: hardware acceleration picture allocation failed
[h264 @ 0x7fba4913dd80] decode_slice_header error
[h264 @ 0x7fba4913dd80] no frame!

This is with a GeForce 970 graphics card.

Answer 1

You've been affected by this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libav/+bug/1374825 so the only thing for you to do is to subscribe to the bug list and whenever the bug is resolved, and the update comes in, the problem will go away all by itself...

If you don't want to wait, have a look here instead.