Brightness, contrast issues (possibly NVidia specific) in totem and VLC

[Paul Dorman]

This issue pertains to a fresh install of Ubuntu 17.10 on a Dell Precision 5520 with NVidia 384.111-0ubuntu0.17.10.1 drivers installed. The NVidia drivers was installed using the Additional Drivers dialog.

Videos, in both Totem (the default video player) and VLC, are quite dark. The NVidia settings do not provide the color correction controls I've seen with previous versions (possibly due to PRIME).

If I open Totem's display preferences, and try to change any value for brightness, contrast, saturation, or hue, the video window goes completely black. Clicking the "Reset to Defaults" button restores the video playback. When the screen is black, subtitles and audio play as per normal.

I traced this down to the package vdpau-va-driver not being installed on the system. I presume this is a missing dependency. I did have vdpau-driver-all:amd64 installed, but this is probably unrelated.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: totem 3.26.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-37.42-generic 4.13.13
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-37-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu3.7
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Wed Mar 21 13:32:28 2018
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/totem
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-03-15 (5 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" - Release amd64 (20180105.1)
ProcEnviron:
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANGUAGE=en_NZ:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_NZ.UTF-8
SourcePackage: totem
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please try the workaround mentioned in bug 1727232

[Paul Dorman (paul-dorman)]

Clearly you did not bother to read my complete report. If you had you would
not have linked to a completely unrelated existing issue. I clearly stated
that installing vdpau-va-driver solved the problem. This is a missing
dependency issue.

I know you folks do your best, but you need to understand that not
everybody with something useful to offer has the free time to familiarise
themselves with the minutiae of Canonical's bug reporting guidelines.

On Wed, 21 Mar 2018 at 15:25, Daniel van Vugt <email address hidden>
wrote:

> Please try the workaround mentioned in bug 1727232
>
> ** Tags added: nvidia visual-quality
>
> ** Summary changed:
>
> - Brightness, contrast issues (possibly NVidia specific)
> + Brightness, contrast issues (possibly NVidia specific) in totem and VLC
>
> ** Also affects: vlc (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
> ** Changed in: totem (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> ** Changed in: vlc (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1757301
>
> Title:
> Brightness, contrast issues (possibly NVidia specific) in totem and
> VLC
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/totem/+bug/1757301/+subscriptions
>

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Installing vdpau-va-driver is only a workaround, and also one that we do not wish to include in normal Ubuntu because it is known to be buggy and cause performance problems for some GPUs.

This bug remains a valid bug for the case where vdpau-va-driver is not installed. As such bug 1727232 may very well be related.

If you are happy with the workaround of installing vdpau-va-driver and do not wish to pursue this bug further then it will expire automatically after 60 days. No further investigation required.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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