Comment 4 for bug 690169

Passing the file to ffmpeg v0.5.1 (binary package from Lucid) results in the process consuming lots of memory, but it doesn't appear to cause the crash. When running VLC by itself, the crash occurs promptly, without excessive memory consumption.

This might be one of those ugly cases where the issue is due to a very specific bad interaction between VLC and one version of ffmpeg, rather than a problem in the library itself. Good luck.