Totem-gstreamer produces artifacts during playback

[Tim Fuchs]

Binary package hint: totem

Totem randomly shows artifacts when watching a video. Look at the screenshot I attached and you'll know what I mean.

This isn't a problem with the video itself, when I rewind and play the exact section again it's fine.

I don't know very much about video encoding but it seems to me that there is problem with handling the different types of frames. GStreamer seems to drop key-frames so that alterations made to that frame will actually be applied to an older, wrong key-frame, producing a garbled picture.

[pt123 (pt123)]

I can confirm it too

When playing xvid files there isn't a smooth play back in the video. Parts of the picture will get blurry every so often.

It has more do with decoding because if you play back around the position where this occurred, the picture is fine.

I don't get this problem in Smplayer.

[Corry Douglas (cor2y)]

Confirmed here as well mpeg4 avi video, xvid or mpeg4/divx pixel/artifact problems only on totem-gstreamer, totem-xine , ffplay and mplayer do not have them for the same video.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for your report, does the same happens if you run: gst-launch playbin uri=file:///path/to/file ? do you get the same? Also it happens with all the files you're seeing?

[Vinzenz Vietzke (vinzv)]

I can confirm the problem both under ubuntu hardy heron and debian lenny. As I can see, using gst-launch doesn't cause the problem.

[Jasa Bartelj (jbartelj)]

I can confirm this behaviour. I have random corruption which looks like keyframes being completely skipped. This happens on two separate installs and if I remember correctly, it has been happening since around the time I upgraded from gutsy to hardy.

Mplayer plays files back without this corruption.

@Pedro Villavicencio: I predominantly watch xvid video and this has been noticeable on all such video when viewed through totem. I tried your gst-launch command and I couldn't see any corruption, though.

[David Santamaría Rogado (howl)]

I use ubuntu hardy and also debian lenny, i can confirm this bug. In lenny this is solved time ago, the update from gstreamer 0.18 to 0.19 solved this in my lenny. In intrepid there is the 0.19, it could be added to hardy-backports or to hardy-updates because there aren't any substantial changes.

[Tim Fuchs (tim-fuchs)]

This is fixed in intrepid by the way, but I stillt have the problem on my notebook with hardy.

There are also other issues like async playback and occasional crashes.

Maybe the gestreamer plugins should be updated in hardy.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

fixed in intrepid according to the reporter, thanks.

[Glyph Lefkowitz (glyph)]

Is there any planned fix for hardy?

[gfnord (gfnord)]

I also have this very problem on Hardy with Moovida (ex Elisa) media center which uses gstreamer as well.

It would really be important for me to get a fix for this on Hardy. Any help on this?

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

there's no fix for hardy, the bug doesnt' fit the requirements of an SRU, please read: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates ; Thanks all.

[gfnord (gfnord)]

@Pedro

Thank you for the quick reply.

However, I read the document you gave and it seems to me that the bug could easily be classified under "When" dot #4 ("Bugs which do not fit under above categories, but (1) have an obviously safe patch and (2) affect an application rather than critical infrastructure packages (like X.org or the kernel).").

I can agree this is not a critical bug, but it is not something that happens only now and then or in combination with specific applications either; it is a true defect in basic functionality - playing videos.