screen tearing during video in unity 2d (but not ubuntu classic)

[lal lop]

During video playback (any player) horizontal lines form briefly during high-action scenes, making it annoying to watch except in low resolution. This is not the case in ubuntu classic. My video card is:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 9025
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 47
 Memory at e8400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
 Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 I/O ports at 8130 [size=8]
 Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: i915
 Kernel modules: i915

so the usual nvidia fixes on the web don't apply. I've tried disabling compositing and transparency effects (as I started noticing them at around the same time) but to no avail.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Thanks for the bug report lal.
Can you try deactivating compositing in metacity by typing the following in a terminal:

$ gconftool --set --type bool /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager false

Then logout and login again to see if the screen tearing is still there.

What version of Ubuntu and Unity 2D are you using?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for unity-2d because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for unity-2d (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[David Beer (beerpivo)]

I can confirm video tearing in Unity 2D (no tearing occurred in Unity 3D). I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit and it happens on 2 different PCs (both have same version of Ubuntu). Deactivating compositing in metacity doesn't help.

[Gerry Boland (gerboland)]

Hi David,
thanks for saying. I've re-opened this bug as a result. However I find it unlikely to be Unity2D itself to be causing this. The window manager Metacity is more suspect, but even then.

Can I ask, what video card & driver are you using?

Rlease in a Terminal run:

apport-collect 792315

which will fetch some system information from your machine and attach it to this bug. It could give us a clue.

[David Beer (beerpivo)]

ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64 (20111012)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: unity-2d 4.12.0-0ubuntu1.1
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-15.26-generic 3.0.13
Tags: oneiric running-unity unity-2d
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-15-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[David Beer (beerpivo)]

apport information

[David Beer (beerpivo)]

ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64 (20111012)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: unity-2d 4.12.0-0ubuntu1.1
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-15.26-generic 3.0.13
Tags: oneiric running-unity unity-2d
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-15-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[David Beer (beerpivo)]

apport information

[David Beer (beerpivo)]

apport information

[David Beer (beerpivo)]

I posted apport information from both PCs. First one is my desktop, second is laptop.

Desktop:
GeForce GTX 460
nvidia driver 280.13 (from nvidia-current package)

Laptop:
GeForce 9600M GT
nvidia driver 280.13 (from nvidia-current-updates package)

Both PCs have very similar software environment so that doesn't help much I guess. I also run some more tests just to make sure. I tested 3 different video files on both PCs in Totem player and mplayer2 with 2 different video outputs in case of mplayer, namely xv and vdpau. No matter which file or which player/video output I used, I observed consistent tearing in Unity 2D and did not observe tearing in Unity 3D.

[Lollerke (pumba88)]

Same here with 12.04 beta 1 fresh install on two machines (1. Toshiba L30-134 with Radeon Xpress 200M 2. Athlon 64 X2 4050e with Radeon HD6450) with the open source ATI driver. Under Unity 2D 5.4 every video tears badly on the upper half of the screen.

[Mossroy (mossroy)]

I have the same issue on Ubuntu 12.04 beta 1 (with current updates), on an Intel graphics card (Intel HD graphics integrated in the Core i5 650).
There is one line of tearing in the upper third of the screen. I don't have this issue on Unity 3D.
The workaround proposed by Florian (comment 1 : disable compositing-manager) does not work in my case. I also tried to disable the option compositor-effects without more luck.

It's very annoying when watching a movie

[Mossroy (mossroy)]

As Gerry suspected in comment #5, I have the same issue under metacity alone. So it does not seem to be caused by unity-2d itself (at least in my case).
More precisely, here are the results of my tests with different window managers chosen on the login screen :
- Ubuntu (=Unity 3D) : no tearing
- Ubuntu 2D (=Unity-2D) : tearing
- Ubuntu, then running metacity --replace : tearing
- Ubuntu classic : no tearing
- Ubuntu classic (no effects) : tearing

[Mossroy (mossroy)]

For those who have an Intel graphics card, I found this discussion that might be relevant : http://askubuntu.com/questions/73909/screen-tearing-in-11-10-with-intel-graphics
It points to another bug in launchpad : https://bugs.launchpad.net/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/755841

There is a proposed workaround for Gnome-shell.
Unfortunately, it did not work for me (but I use Unity-2D and have a Core i5-650, not a Sandy Bridge)

[Mossroy (mossroy)]

I face the same behavior on another computer, with Intel graphics card integrated in a Core2 Duo CPU T7250
The CLUTTER_PAINT and CLUTTER_VBLANK workaround did not work either

[Ernst Persson (ernstp)]

For radeon cards you can enable EXAVsync

[Tibor Farkas (farkas-carpatian)]

I have intel hd3000 in my laptod and unity2d is tearing for me too.

[mirak (mirak-mirak)]

it's like 3 years that I have tearing in videos with composite enabled, with ATI or NVidia
so I disable it, but now window manager like unity or gnome requires composite and just run very bad without in their fallback modes

[mirak (mirak-mirak)]

I mean Ubuntu is going nowhere with such a problem

[Norman Ramsey (nr-cs)]

I have a similar problem using Unity2D. My machine was built to be a low-end HTPC with all the computation in the graphics card.
I got excellent results with 10.04 Lucid Lynx. Upgrading to 12.04 has shown a *substantial* tearing problem using either
mplayer or mplayer2 with vdpau and proprietary Nvidia drivers.

The hardware in question is an AMD Sempron(tm) 140 Processor with an Nvidia GeForce 210 graphics card.

I will run apport collect to provide more information.

[Norman Ramsey (nr-cs)]

ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu13
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: unity-2d 5.12.0-0ubuntu1.1
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-31.50-generic 3.2.28
Tags: precise running-unity unity-2d
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-31-generic i686
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-08-11 (43 days ago)
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo video

[Norman Ramsey (nr-cs)]

apport information

[AG Restringere (ag-restringere-deactivatedaccount)]

Could anyone reporting here provide screenshots, I think I have a duplicate to this bug...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-2d/+bug/1154723

It does indeed seem to have something to do with metacity because it doesn't happen on Ubuntu-3d...

[Flávio Oliveira (oliveiradeflavio)]

Hi guys, following a tutorial on the blog "diolinux" some users can through the steps below ...

Create um new directory

sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

The information below are within a conf file. within the new directory

echo -e 'Section "Device"\n Identifier "Intel Graphics"\n Driver "Intel"\n Option "AccelMethod" "sna"\n Option "TearFree" "true"\nEndSection' | sudo tee /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

Then restart your computer.