screen blanks on external screen

[SA]

Binary package hint: mplayer

This isn't strictly an mplayer bug because it affects other video players but a big clue lies in the mplayer specific workaround.

On my macbook pro laptop running lucid and the nvidia driver I have a problem with the external screen. Everytime I launch
a video application the screen switches off for a few seconds before _and_ after the video plays. This affects mplayer and xine
equally. Strangely mplayer -vo sdl is affected sometimes, sometimes the blank at the beginning doesn't happen.

On my external monitor the blank screen lasts a few seconds, on the projector I tried the projector tried to cycle through the inputs looking for a signal and blank for a long time.

Since I use this for presentations it is a significant issue. Originally I thought this was a kde4 issue since the hardware was previously working using kde3 on an old version of suse. However, the fix I have found works for kde3 and kde4.

workaround:

If I run mplayer -vo gl ... mplayer crashes, sometimes it screws up the external screen, sometimes the external screen blinks mostly nothing happens. After this all video players run fine with no blanks, blinks or pauses. If I log out and back in to kde of any flavour the problem reoccurs and I have to repeat this fix.

I am running kubuntu lucid on a 5.5 macbook pro using the kubuntu nvidia packages.

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

This is a pretty general issue that probably should be better adressed as a spec, but I'm not sure. The fact that it strongly depends on the video output module suggests to me that you are facing either an hardware limitation or simply a bug in your video drivers. Unfortunately, the information you present here is not specific enough to start working on the problem.

For now I'm unassinging mplayer, but I'm unsure what should be done with this report.

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Hello
Are you experiencing again this issue ?
Thanks
Fabio

[SA (superaorta)]

On Sunday 05 Jun 2011 18:01:44 you wrote:
> Hello
> Are you experiencing again this issue ?
> Thanks
> Fabio
>
>
> ** Changed in: ubuntu
> Status: New => Incomplete

To be honest after the last time I did a presentation I gave up using this
laptop because of this problem so I'm not sure. If I find sometime and a
projector I'll try it again...

Ta, Matt

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Ubuntu because there has been no activity for 60 days.]