Need textured-video - No video when using window transparency.

[Peter van der Laan]

To see the fault:

My used hardware Acer Aspire L3600

1. Use Ubuntu 8.04 beta.
2. Goto System-Pereferences-Appearance
3. Select Visual Effects
4. Select Extra
5. Close
6. Select in the Examples folder the movie Experience ubuntu.ogg
7. Play move.
8. Press Alt button and scroll with your mouse wheel to change the transparancy of your window.

The movie disappears in the window!
If you move the window the movie will return in a fragment.

I don't know if this is a problem with Totem or a problem with my videocard + driver.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

more like a xorg or driver issue.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Known issue. If you wish to see the video behind transparent windows, use 'Option "TexturedVideo" "true"' for the driver. The downside is increased CPU usage etc.

This might get fixed for Intrepid.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

I've a new information to add:
only the first video launched (at the same time) suffers this problem. The other video windows behave well.

[Xepra (xepra)]

I tried enabling the TexturedVideo, but it caused my CPU to max out on an HD video... The only reason I mention this is because Xorg uses about 7 times more cpu with poorer picture quality than the same video being played with X11.

For comparison:

Xv uses about 40% (35% vlc, 5% Xorg) of my cpu on average while playing a 720p x264 video
X11 uses about 50% (35% vlc, 15% Xorg) playing the same video (but with all those nifty compiz effects working fine)
With TexturedVideo enabled and the default output (I am assuming Xv?) it used 100% of the cpu, mostly Xorg I believe. I think VLC was not receiving enough cpu time to even decode the video properly, hence the poorer picture quality.

Notably these are amplified numbers (and differences) since it was an HD video; lower resolution videos do not use anywhere near this much CPU.

In other words TexturedVideo is not a viable option. Is there anyway to set the default video output for all of Ubuntu to use X11 video output by default? Or do we have to set the default program by program?

Also, will the performance of TexturedVideo depend on video card/drivers? Regardless, due to its poor performance, I would say it probably should not be enabled by default on ibex (unless of course it is only enabled for higher end cards...).

[unggnu (unggnu)]

That is the reason why TexturedVideo is disabled per default in Ubuntu and afaik it is still in Intrepid with Intel graphic. X11 video output is no option since is consumes much more cpu and looks very ugly (grainy) if resized or looked in full screen but of course you can change it for your favorite video player. VLC has an option dialog for this, mplayer a command line option I guess and for Totem and any gstreamer video player you can use gstreamer-properties.

[Xepra (xepra)]

I would not say that the cpu usage difference between Xv and X11 is not the deciding factor because for more standard size videos:

Xv uses about 12% (8% vlc, 4% Xorg) of my cpu on average while playing a 652x356 xvid video
X11 uses about 14% (6% vlc, 8% Xorg) playing the same video

I would consider this difference to be almost negligible. However I did not notice the scaling effects (I did not resize the video while messing with this) until you pointed it out. That is a much bigger issue for me than the nominal cpu usage difference.

Regardless, this probably means that the current settings is probably the best setting, and thus while this bug report (and my duplicate) was very informative, it really was never a bug to begin with... At least not one with a viable solution. So I apologize for taking your time on the issue, although I really do appreciate your expertise and help :)

P.S. The only reason I mentioned Ibex is because Tim mentioned "This might get fixed for Intrepid.", which sounded like TexturedVideo may be enabled by default...

Thanks again!

[Xepra (xepra)]

Heh, man I wish I could type - that's a nice double negative in the first sentence; it should read:

"I would say that the cpu usage difference between Xv and X11 is not the deciding factor because for more standard size videos:"

Sorry.

[unggnu (unggnu)]

I guess the cpu usage in full screen with X11 is much higher but maybe not in standard size window mode. Anyway Textured Video is enabled per default upstream but the driver still doesn't seem to be ready so it was disabled from the Ubuntu maintainers and I think there will be no change in Intrepid. Maybe in Intrepid+1 when the new memory manager GEM is ready.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Does anyone know what the upstream bug(s) is for this?

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

I don't see any upstream bugs linked to this... But maybe it's because
launchpad changed aspect, and I'm not used to it yet

[unggnu (unggnu)]

I guess there is no upstream bug report since textured video is enabled per default.
A report about the performance issue might be https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14311.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Intrepid uses textured video by default again, since the performance seems to be quite good.

[Peter van der Laan (info-petervanderlaan)]

I have updated my system from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10.
I am happy. Problem seems to be solved!!!