Comment 15 for bug 774008

Thank you for your analyses and insights. I would suggest that to
advance to a new OS version, firstly one should not break what already
works well in the existing version, then provide some sort on
intelligence to detect what more modern and advanced features are
available on the receiving PC before implementing unusable changes that
break what would otherwise work. For example, 11.04 detected that this
particular PC did not have the necessary resources to run the Unity GUI
and defaulted to a slightly broken version of the version 10.x GUI. If
that intelligence could detect the inability to run the enhanced GUI,
surely it should have also detected a linked inability to run advanced
video playback functionality. It seems unfortunate (to a relative layman
such as myself) that the association between those two issues (advanced
display capability both for GUI and video) and was not recognised at the
time. Although I understand (having been an IT tech writer for years)
that such things can be missed in the turmoil of meeting a release date,
a little community testing might well have picked up that oversight.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand: I typed gst-launch-0.10 playbin2
uri=file:///$HOME/Videos/Aardman/wallaceloaf_10_xx_xx.flv at the
terminal prompt and the video played flawlessly in a small window that I
could resize to near full screen without playback issue (apart from a
momentary video blanking during resizing as the audio continued playing.
Except for the fact that there were no control icons available in that
window to pause or regulate the playback (and that at full screen size
the audio momentarily played catchup with proper synch) it worked a
treat.

Here's the shell output after playing the video.

> Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
> Pipeline is PREROLLING ...
> Pipeline is PREROLLED ...
> Setting pipeline to PLAYING ...
> New clock: GstPulseSinkClock
> ERROR: from element /GstPlayBin2:playbin20/GstPlaySink:playsink0/GstBin:vbin/GstAutoVideoSink:videosink/GstXvImageSink:videosink-actual-sink-xvimage: Output window was closed
> Additional debug info:
> xvimagesink.c(1318): gst_xvimagesink_handle_xevents (): /GstPlayBin2:playbin20/GstPlaySink:playsink0/GstBin:vbin/GstAutoVideoSink:videosink/GstXvImageSink:videosink-actual-sink-xvimage
> Execution ended after 36872070286 ns.
> Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
> Setting pipeline to READY ...
> Setting pipeline to NULL ...
> Freeing pipeline ...

As for getting the relevant part from the dmesg file by issuing: cat
dmesg |grep drm and attaching the output to this bug report. I typed in
that instruction into the shell but could find no output to attach from
that folder. Perhaps you could advise what to attach please. I also
tried to redirect that output to a text file but permission was denied
and when I tried to do so with the sudo command, after entering my
password, nothing seemed to happen.

Please be so kind as to advise where to find what to attach and what
part of the file you need.

Thanks in anticipation.

On Fri, 2011-10-07 at 15:09 +0000, madbiologist wrote:

> I fully agree about the need for more testing. If I was you I'd be
> feeling pretty frustrated right now. Although I think Canonical could do
> more testing of Ubuntu before release, I would also like to say that
> testing is something that us users can help out with. Canonical do not
> have the money or staffing resources to purchase and test all the
> hardware out there. In this regard, it is disappointing that when you
> reported this bug immediately after the release of 11.04 (and therefore
> during the pre-alpha testing phase of 11.10), no one responded in a
> timely manner.
>
> My observations over the last couple of years have been that even when
> issues are noticed promptly, it often takes a whole release cycle to
> correct them, due to may bugs being largely out of Ubuntu's hands as
> they are in upstream components. In this case the bug seems to be
> upstream in GStreamer and how it works under the VESA framebuffer +
> classic softpipe environment. The GStreamer developers are the ones
> with the most expertise in this area. However it is worth noting that
> some people, including Greg Kroah-Hartman from Novell/SUSE's kernel team
> have criticised Canonical/Ubuntu for constantly taking from upstream and
> giving very little back in the way of patches.
>
> Sometimes it is necessary for various upstream projects, and even Ubuntu
> itself, to drop support for older hardware and/or software tools to be
> able to fix other bugs, and more importantly, to enable new features.
> The reasons described at the first link in comment #10 of this bug are a
> good example of that.
>
> If this bug can be fixed at all for future releases of Ubuntu, we will
> have to get the upstream GStreamer developers to do it. I'm not sure
> whether much can be done given there is no DRI driver for the [SiS]
> 661/741/760 PCI/AGP chipset (see comment #10), but I'll talk to them.
> Before I do that, can you try playing the file directly by entering the
> following command in a terminal:
>
> gst-launch-0.10 playbin2 uri=file:///$HOME/<path to file>
>
> For example, I have a file called Insalata_Caprese_Rec_317_263427.mp4 in
> Ubuntu's default "Videos" directory, so I use:
>
> gst-launch-0.10 playbin2
> uri=file:///$HOME/Videos/Insalata_Caprese_Rec_317_263427.mp4
>
> Please report what you see in the video, if anything, and what is
> printed in the terminal.
>
> Also, please navigate to /var/log by issuing:
>
> cd .. <ENTER>
> cd .. <ENTER>
> cd /var/log
>
> and then get the relevant part from the dmesg file by issuing:
>
> cat dmesg |grep drm
>
> and attach the output to this bug report.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/774008
>
> Title:
> ABC iView Flashplayer file blacking out on playback
>
> Status in “gstreamer0.10” package in Ubuntu:
> New
>
> Bug description:
> Just downloaded the file spooks_11_09_04.flv (a 640 x 360, H.264 video
> codec / MPEG-4 AAC audio codec, 25 frames a second FLV file) using the
> Python iView file streaming application and, with no other
> applications running, tried to play it back with the new Media Player
> (Totem Movie Player 2.32.0) which installed with the 11.01 Natty
> Narwhal upgrade that I did yesterday evening. The previous version of
> this application had the Flashplayer plugin installed and working
> perfectly. Now, on this new version, I can only see flickering pieces
> of the video images when I press the F11 key repeatedly to go between
> full screen and window modes, as if a black overlay is blocking an
> underlying image from being viewed. I also just tried playing a
> regular (non Flashplayer) MP4 video and that encounters the same
> problem. Please advise a workaround. Thanks in anticipation.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
> Package: libgstreamer0.10-0 0.10.32-3ubuntu3
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
> Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic i686
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Sat Apr 30 20:28:45 2011
> ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/totem
> InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
> ProcEnviron:
> LANGUAGE=en_AU:en
> LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: gstreamer0.10
> UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-04-29 (1 days ago)
>
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