Plasma, Dolphin, VLC, intermittent playback, double window
Rant over, technical details provided, problem solved. I absolutely hate these papercut-style issues, because they should never happen. I also hate the fact that something as trivial as media playback from a network share cannot be taken for granted, 100% of the time. Why do I need to worry about these odd things, and why does the behavior need to change every now and then?
I do not know for how long my anti-tweak will work and last. Hopefully, I won't have to revisit this exercise in the future, but apparently, you never know. Well, if you're one of those people who experience this odd behavior with VLC, try the prefetch filter read size value. Until next time, fellas.