Black screen on video playback

[marianitn]

On a Lucid clean install, I cannot play any kind of video using Totem. I just get the audio and a black screen and after that I get the same black screen on any video player I try (mplayer, vlc, xine, etc.). If I don't open totem first, I can see the videos on the other players. I tried disabling compiz, but get the same behavior.
I also tried gst-launch playbin uri=file:///path/to/vid and that works Ok.
Please, tell me if you need any extra information.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: libgstreamer0.10-0 0.10.28-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-25.44-generic 2.6.32.21+drm33.7
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-25-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Oct 16 10:38:09 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=es_AR.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gstreamer0.10

[Maxime GASSE (maxime-gasse)]

I have the same symptoms on Maverick (64)
This worked for me as a workaround:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=451287

[marianitn (marianitn)]

Yes, I tried that and it works, but video playback is choppy and I don't want to loose Xv. I tried with Lucid and Maverick Live CDs and could play videos (bad quality), but I think it's because radeon driver does not support Xv. Using fglrx + totem screen goes black :(

[eiver (eiver)]

Its not fglrx. I have gtx 570 and have the same problem. Tried drives from the repos as well as drivers directly from the nvidia site. xv doesn't work. The workaround posted above works, but not using xv causes tearing while watching a video.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for the report, it has been some time without any response or feedback in this bug report and we are wondering if this is still an issue for you with the latest release of Ubuntu the Natty Narwhal, May you please test with that version and comment back if you're still having or not the issue? Please have a look at http://www.ubuntu.com/download to know how to install that version. Thanks in advance and sorry for the late response.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gstreamer0.10 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Julien Vion (julien-vion)]

Still got this bug on Oneiric.

Linux 3.0.0-13 AMD64

Fglrx-updates 2:8.902

I also confirm the strange behavior that mplayer with XV driver works fine if Totem has not be launched before, and gives black video screen once Totem has been launched once. Mplayer with alternative video driver (say, gl2) still works.

[Julien Vion (julien-vion)]

Note that I would higher the importance of this bug, since not being able to play videos on ATI hardware seems bad…

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[mk (mk.pmb)]

Same problem on xenial in an Acer Aspire One 255 (AOD255E), also in VLC. gnome-mplayer shows the video but at a very slow frame rate, and in cases where it has to scale the image up to make it fill the screen, the image quality is worse than on an Acer Aspire One 360 with VLC (same resolution, full screen, no frame skips). I guess that gnome-mplayer used software rendering, most probably because hardware video acceleration was unavailable. The latter would explain why other media players failed.

Also a Thinkpad on precise started to have the all-black video problem some time in spring or summer of 2016; I had thought this was just an end-of-support thing precise is quite old now. On the Thinkpad, VLC and gnome-mplayer also show the video as just black.

[mk (mk.pmb)]

In case it helps: On the AOD255E, lspci | grep VGA | cut -d : -sf 3-
 Intel Corporation Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx Integrated Graphics Controller
On the AOD360:
 Intel Corporation Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx Integrated Graphics Controller
 (however, this one runs on Ubuntu precise, so maybe I should just try
  and downgrade the AOD255E.)
On the Thinkpad:
 Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
On another Thinkpad that can play video with no problems:
 Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

[mk (mk.pmb)]

When I "watch" a black video in VLC on the AOD255E or the bug-affected Thinkpad, take a screenshot of thath blackness and display the image file in eog, I see what I'd expect to have seen in the video at that position.

[mk (mk.pmb)]

I tested some VLC output modules on the AOD255E:
VDPAU video output: no video
XVideo video output (XCB): black video
OpenGL GLX video output (XCB): degraded as with gnome-mplayer
X11 video output (XCB): "stairways" when diagonal objects move very fast, but acceptable in all other aspects, so I'll just use that for now.

[mk (mk.pmb)]

Possible dupe: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/totem/+bug/108769

[mk (mk.pmb)]

Unfortunately, X11 video output (XCB) is not a good solution. On my Thinkpad it produces massive frame drops and color artifacts if I try to use a zoom level other than 100% oder 200%. This means I cannot watch my favorite YouTube videos on fullscreen on that computer.