movie player flickers

[Tam]

Binary package hint: totem

When playing music or video files the visual part of the window keeps flickering. It also affects any windows or dialogue boxes which I hover over the visual part i.e. makes them flicker as well.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/totem-gstreamer
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: totem-gstreamer 2.24.3-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: totem
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-7-generic i686

[Tom (tom6)]

I had a similar problem and found this way that fixed it for me (thanks again Trab). If it is the same problem it might help you too. You can always change the setting back if it doesnt help. Good luck and happy hunting :)

 Trab wrote on 2008-11-09: (permalink)

easy fix:
     run gstreamer-properties
     click on video ouput (or something similar)
     under plugin select X Window System (no Xv)

then restart totem.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

thanks for the report, is this reproducible using the visual effects or without them? there's a report about flickering with compiz enabled. which video driver and card do you have?

[Tam (t-allison1909)]

I am using an ATI Radeon graphics card. Not sure what video driver it is though. I have also recently descovered that this occurrence does not just happen with Totem. I downloaded VLC as recommended by a friend and it flickers with that as well. I am starting to suspect that it must be my graphics card.

[Tom (tom6)]

Have you opened a 'terminal' window its like a 'command' window in Windows (try Applications menu, Accessories, Terminal - then try

gstreamer-properties (remember pressing the tab key does predictive text style)
click on video ouput (or something similar in the pop-up box)
under plugin select X Window System (no Xv)

then restart totem.

Also try the System menu, Administration and find the Hardware Drivers for a great little program to tweeak and optimise performance for your graphics card. I did that and suddenly found all the writing on my screen is a lot less blurry :)

Good luck and have fun :)

[Tam (t-allison1909)]

Thanks Tom, your advice has done the trick.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

reassigning to xorg since changing xv to x11 workaround the issue that's a video driver bug

[Tom (tom6)]

Hey, good to hear the workaround works.

ATI have only just allowed us Linux users access to their drivers secrets so i'm not surprised the linux drivers aren't perfect yet. I'm just impressed with how quickly the ati driver has appeared (even tho i can't use it for fear of using non-free software. Oddly i thought that paying for the graphics card would allow me to use it rather than just sit looking at it but ati seem to want an additional payment if i actually want to use it).

Thanks linux dudes tho for straightening everything else out :)

[Tom (tom6)]

Soon :)