Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic - Wrong aspect ratio in movies.

[AndyC]

Binary package hint: totem

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic - Clean Install
Aspect Ratio is not functioning. Movies are all basically square. Trying to change the aspect ratio in the veiw tab has no effect.
Gnome-Mplayer works fine. It is the only software that is functioning correctly. No other players will play movies.(XIne,SMPlayer,VLC)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Nov 25 17:53:06 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/totem
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
Package: totem 2.28.2-0ubuntu3
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-15.50-generic
SourcePackage: totem
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-15-generic i686

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

 * Is this reproducible?
 * If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?

 This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

[AndyC (comptonstudios)]

I have set vlc to OpenGL and it work fine.

[Kavish (kavish001)]

I'm using Ubuntu 9.10 on a Toshiba Satellite Laptop with 15 inch 16:9 screen (1280x800).

Somehow Totem doesn't detect the right screen size and displays videos with a very strange aspect ratio (4:3 becomes more like 3:4, etc). When I change the screen size and change it back (system - preferences - screen), Totem works fine again, but I'll get the same problem after rebooting.

Since xorg.conf is no longer used in Ubuntu 9.10, I searched for other screen settings and found "monitors.xml" in my home directory in ".config".

Inside are two tags (<x> and <y>) that are set to 0 and can be changed to 16 and 9 if you have a wide screen:

<monitors version="1">
  <configuration>
      <clone>no</clone>
      <output name="VGA1">
      </output>
      <output name="LVDS1">
          <vendor>LPL</vendor>
          <product>0x2a00</product>
          <serial>0x00000000</serial>
          <width>1280</width>
          <height>800</height>
          <rate>60</rate>
          <x>16</x>
          <y>9</y>
          <rotation>normal</rotation>
          <reflect_x>no</reflect_x>
          <reflect_y>no</reflect_y>
          <primary>no</primary>
      </output>
      <output name="TV1">
      </output>
  </configuration>
</monitors>

This file is also changed after using the GUI to change your screen settings. So, be careful.

After editing this file and rebooting, Totem worked fine. Of course I tried a lot to fix this. Can anybody confirm this?

[Kavish (kavish001)]

Sorry for my last info. It is wrong. Although "it works", the X and Y settings in monitors.xml are not meant for setting these display's dimensions. It seems they are used for an offset in the position of everything on your screen. It works if you put anything different than the default (0 and 0) there, because it forces to change the screen settings.

You can get the same effect if you change the screen size with xrandr -s to any valid size and change it back afterwards. Somehow the values that Totem needs are written somewhere in memory when changing your screen settings.

Well, that meens this is still not solved. I don't like to change my screen setting each time after booting my system in order to get the right aspect ratio in Totem. Moreover I don't like to use the settings in monitors.xml in the wrong way (it is now set to "1" and "1").

Does anybody know what totem is missing (from where) after booting the system and how to solve this in a right way?

[AndyC (comptonstudios)]

I still have not found a fix for this problem in Totem. Are you dead set on
the Totem player as your media player? Both MPlayer and VLC function
properly on my Toshiba if set to Open GL under the player(s) preferences.
Mplayer is just a little buggy in the DVD menu screen. I was disappointed
that I could not configure Totem in some way, either through a menu,
terminal or config file. I would still like to.

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Kavish <email address hidden> wrote:

> Sorry for my last info. It is wrong. Although "it works", the X and Y
> settings in monitors.xml are not meant for setting these display's
> dimensions. It seems they are used for an offset in the position of
> everything on your screen. It works if you put anything different than
> the default (0 and 0) there, because it forces to change the screen
> settings.
>
> You can get the same effect if you change the screen size with xrandr -s
> to any valid size and change it back afterwards. Somehow the values that
> Totem needs are written somewhere in memory when changing your screen
> settings.
>
> Well, that meens this is still not solved. I don't like to change my
> screen setting each time after booting my system in order to get the
> right aspect ratio in Totem. Moreover I don't like to use the settings
> in monitors.xml in the wrong way (it is now set to "1" and "1").
>
> Does anybody know what totem is missing (from where) after booting the
> system and how to solve this in a right way?
>
> --
> Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic - Wrong aspect ratio in movies.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/488495
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “totem” package in Ubuntu: Incomplete
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: totem
>
> Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic - Clean Install
> Aspect Ratio is not functioning. Movies are all basically square. Trying to
> change the aspect ratio in the veiw tab has no effect.
> Gnome-Mplayer works fine. It is the only software that is functioning
> correctly. No other players will play movies.(XIne,SMPlayer,VLC)
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Wed Nov 25 17:53:06 2009
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
> ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/totem
> InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
> Package: totem 2.28.2-0ubuntu3
> ProcEnviron:
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-15.50-generic
> SourcePackage: totem
> Uname: Linux 2.6.31-15-generic i686
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/totem/+bug/488495/+subscribe
>

[Kavish (kavish001)]

For me it is no big problem to install another media player, but Totem is fine and it is the default after installing a fresh Ubuntu. Now I'd like it if Linux becomes more popular on the desktop and I think that's only possible if it works out of the box and if it is easy for non computer experts too.

Meanwhile I found a better way to fix this problem, but I still don't fully understand how this works. gstreamer comes with a graphic configuration tool "gstreamer-properties". You can start it from the command line. Click on the video tab. Near "Default Output" You will probably see something like "auto detect" (I'm using a Dutch language version) . Select from the list the Custom option and replace what's in the "pipeline" field with 'identity ! xvimagesink pixel-aspect-ratio=1/1'. After testing and closing Totem works fine and still does after rebooting.

Although this fixed the problem, I still like to know why the wrong screen dimensions seem to be detected at default. Moreover, although I found the above settings somewhere on the internet, I don't exactly understand how it works and I can't find any detailed documentation.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

thanks for the bug report and sorry for not getting back sooner. Could anyone please confirm if the issue is still there with Ubuntu-10.04 or 10.10?

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

We are closing this bug report as it lacks the information, described in the previous comments, we need to investigate the problem further. However, please reopen it if you can give us the missing information and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future.

[AndyC (comptonstudios)]

I can confirm that this bug does no longer affects me in distributions 10.04 or 10.10.

Thank you.