Bypassing Video playback problems in Compiz Fusion / Beryl

IMPORTANT NOTE: As the user Mastro (thank you very much for the info) wrote in the comments on this page, what follows will work but it’s NOT a solution, only a work-around to the problem. As he says, ” using software video rendering instead of graphic card video rendering lead to lower performance and less quality…” but it will work and you will have no problem in any case. If you want to completely SOLVE the problem, then you can only use a patched version of MPlayer. Here are the suggestions and instructions by Mastro:

The only way to use the graphic card with video playback while using AIGLX/XGL is to enable the Videoplayback Compiz plugin and to patch mplayer to use this plugin… (at the moment mplayer is the only player that has a patch for this)

in the future all video player software should have this ability. Since Compiz is still a unstable software players doesn’t add support for it.. do you want it? ask them! File a Bug report/request feature

that’s what i mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPWMVxkGUd8

the only repository i know that already have a patched version of Mplayer is 3v1n0 (trevino: is an italian guy) repository (for ubuntu) i don’t know of others… but may be they exist
http://3v1n0.tuxfamily.org/apt-repository/

the alternative option is to manually compile it with the patch..
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-March/022343.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/compiz@lists.freedesktop.org/msg02164.html
it’s not an easy thing

again…
go to your media-player homepage and open a bug asking for the plugin support

ps: this doesn’t work with mplayer-plugin (browser build-in player) or with kmplayer.. it only work with mplayer (command line) and gmplayer (gtk/gnome mplayer GUI)

a little note:
mplayer with the patch doesn’t playback with XV if you are without compiz

and with compiz enabled could be slower then without patch/compiz
this depends on the driver support to that plugin…
i’ve preferred to remove mplayer with the patch and to disable compiz when i want to watch a video

So, now you have three options to correctly watch a movie in a Compiz Fusion enabled system:

  1. Follow this guide and bypass the problem
  2. Use a patched Mplayer
  3. Disable Compiz Fusion (and this was the most obvious thing to do from the beginning 🙁 )

In any case I suggest you to input the bug to the staff of your preferred video player. It will surely help the development of Compiz Fusion and of the player too. Good luck then! Here starts the guide 🙂

Well, surely you love all of the wonderful effects that Compiz Fusion or Beryl can give to your desktop. But surely you also found out a lot of problems when trying to watch movies with your prefered Video player. An ugly black screen instead of you preferred TV show, full screen windows becoming semi-transparent…. well, that surely is not good. I’ve been looking in the net for a solution to all of this problems and I found this great article for what concerns the black screen but no info for the transparent fullscreen mode. Then I posted in the Compiz Fusion FOrum and I found a solution to this problem too 🙂

So let’s start working and see how we can get rid of all the problems with these very used movie players: GStreamer, vlc, Mplayer, xine e Realplayer.

Gstreamer

That’s the default Ubuntu player, used by Totem. To correctly visualize you video files with Totem proceed as follows:

1) Open a terminal and enter:

gstreamer-properties

2) Move to the Video tag.
3) In default video plugin select “X Window System (without Xv)”.
4) Click on try to verify if it works fine.
5) Close this window, problems solved.

Vlc

That’s my preferred player, I always use it and surely many of you do too. It is very important to have it working correctly, so:

1) Run vlc.
2) Settings –> Preferences.
3) Selct Video and then outpoot modules.
3) Check the little “Advanced options” check box on the button left corner of this window.
4) New options will now appear, so in Video outpoot choose “X11 video out”.
5) Save and exit. Mission completed.
Mplayer

I never use it and every time I try to open something with it, it never works ;P but if you use it…:

1) Run Mplayer.
2) Right click on the screen and select Preferences.
3) Select the video tag and in available drivers choose X11 (XImage/Shm).
4) Save and restart the application.

Xine

Very useful if you use Kaffeine or Totem with xine:

1) Run xine.
2) File –> configure –> preferences.
3) In experience_level select “Master Of The Known Universe” so that all the setting become visible.
4) Select the video tag.
5) In driver choose “xshm”.
6) Restart Xine.

Real Player

Few passages are needed to configure it:

1) Run Real Player.
2) Move to Settings –> preferences.
3) Select the “Hardware” tab.
4) Uncheck the check box “UseXVideo”.
5) Restart Real Player.

Transparent Full Screen problem

This is a problem that only occurs with Compiz Fusion. So to set it properly we’ll need CompizConfig Settings Manager. You can access it from System –> Preferences in Gnome or using the Compiz Fusion Icon I described you in THIS article.

Now click on the “General” button (On the left) and then select the General Options button. Move to the Opacity Settings tab. Select the existing string, edit it and substitute it with this line:

((type=Unknown | Menu | PopupMenu | DropdownMenu | Tooltip | Notification | Combo | Dnd | name=sun-awt-X11-XWindowPeer) | (type=Normal & override_redirect=1)) & !(name=sun-awt-X11-XFramePeer | name=sun-awt-X11-XDialogPeer | state=fullscreen | name=^x11$ | name=^xv$ | name=^xine Video Window$)

Set the Opacity Value to 100 and click OK. The trick is done, try it yourself! The people there at opencomposite say that this is not a bug but a simple setting issue… well, that’s exactly what a bug is. Something unsolved that makes a program behave in a different way than that it should be meant to act. So, call it whatever you like, for me it is a bug and I’m sure you agree with me since it has to be solved manually and sistematically on each Compiz Fusion installation ;P

38 Comments:

  1. This is all good and well, but I have openSUSE 10.2, and my problem with MPlayer is that even though I had done what you said, I can’t get it to display fullscreen. The aspect ratio is locked to the size of a small window. Half size, double size, whatever I do, the video size won’t increase.

  2. Hi Lenze, which video player are you using? Does it happen with any file you try to open?

  3. Thanks a lot for your explain ! You save my rainy afternoon !! (Yes the weather is currently no very great in Paris 🙁

    Jab

  4. mplayer -vo x11 -vf scale=1024 -fs -zoom *.avi

  5. Thanks for this blog post…this has been causing me some headaches since I’ve installed Compiz!

  6. Glad it has been useful to you 😉

  7. Ubuntu Guide covers this,
    http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty#How_to_fix_black_windows_during_video_playback

    Other issues when you cannot play a movie in full screen have to do with different bugs.

  8. Awesome, it worked perfectly in VLC. I haven’t tried the others though. Thanks a lot.

  9. I am trying to fix totem as well as vlc but i do not get the option of “X Window System (without Xv)”.

    Please help.
    Thanks.

  10. Hi Ranj, for Totm you have to follow the instructions related to Xine: did you do it? Looks like you tryed to configure directly from Totem (It can’t work that way…)!

  11. GREAT!
    THANKS

  12. Thanks very much!! I almost gave up using beryl, thinking it was the fault of my integrated video card in my laptop. Now video works great on VLC and mplayer. I recently installed Fedora 7 on a Lenovo C200 duo t2060.

  13. Thanks man! I’ve been disabling GL Desktop to watch videos. This is much nicer and really demonstrates the power of Linux. With Vista, my lappy could NEVER map desktop video onto a 3d workspace.

  14. That’s for sure Hunter, you’d need a Ninja PC to achieve such 3D eye candy, yet basic in terms of hardware requests, effects if you where running on Vista… Linux is so much faster and stable that it isn’t even worth comparing the two 😀
    I believe that in terms of Desktop interface Linux is today the most advanced OS on earth.

  15. Pingback: Solución a problemas de video con Compiz Fusion y Beryl » blooG

  16. esta pagina me indica muchas cosas pero hasta donde nose quiero saber mas de todo

  17. hi the black screen problem was solved for totem and vlc but the video runs slower in full screen mode after this fix in both vlc and totem

  18. Prerit, that’s an interesting feedback, you should talk about your problem in the Compiz Forum. It never happened to me and you are the first person I ever know to have such a problem, so a freedback to the Compiz devels would really be interesting for them!

  19. MILLION thanx from Puerto Rico, I really appreciate this!

  20. AHA! dude, I have been trying to correct video playback on my gusty desktop with compiz-fusion for days! thanks a ton, man!

  21. that’s NOT a solution..
    it’s a work-around
    using software video rendering instead of graphic card video rendering lead to lower performance and less quality…

  22. uhm, interesting, very well then… and the SOLUTION is? If tell us I’ll surely be happy to update the post 🙂

  23. @thedarkmaster
    there’s no simple solution for now..

    the only way to use the graphic card with video playback while using AIGLX/XGL is to enable the Videoplayback Compiz plugin and to patch mplayer to use this plugin… (at the moment mplayer is the only player that has a patch for this)

    in the future all video player software should have this ability. Since Compiz is still a unstable software players doesn’t add support for it.. do you want it? ask them! File a Bug report/request feature

    that’s what i mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPWMVxkGUd8

    the only repository i know that already have a patched version of Mplayer is 3v1n0 (trevino: is an italian guy) repository (for ubuntu) i don’t know of others… but may be they exist
    http://3v1n0.tuxfamily.org/apt-repository/

    the alternative option is to manually compile it with the patch..
    http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-March/022343.html
    http://www.mail-archive.com/compiz@lists.freedesktop.org/msg02164.html
    it’s not an easy thing

    again…
    go to your media-player homepage and open a bug asking for the plugin support

    ps: this doesn’t work with mplayer-plugin (browser build-in player) or with kmplayer.. it only work with mplayer (command line) and gmplayer (gtk/gnome mplayer GUI)

  24. a little note:
    mplayer with the patch doesn’t playback with XV if you are without compiz

    and with compiz enabled could be slower then without patch/compiz
    this depends on the driver support to that plugin…
    i’ve preferred to remove mplayer with the patch and to disable compiz when i want to watch a video

  25. Perfect, thanks for the imput, I’ll modify the post to advise people about this problems 🙂

  26. @thedarkmaster
    you are welcome 🙂

    just remember that this is all in development and could still have problem 🙂

    with video at high quality i’ve seen poor performance for now 🙂
    but i’m sure they will become better with the support of many people

    see ya 🙂 may be in my blog if you will ever learn italian 😛

  27. @Mastro:
    Eh eh…. My God… really, man…. I AM ITALIAN!!! 🙂
    Cioè, in altre parole, sono Italiano e senza dubbio un salto al tuo blog lo faccio eccome 😉

  28. Ehm… ma non sarai mica Daniele Mastro di Pavia???

  29. Si, riconosco il blog. Piccolo il web, eh?

  30. @thedarkmagister
    sei chi penso io?
    😀
    eheh si è piccolo… devo ancora risponderti a quell’email 🙂
    ci sentiamo allora 🙂 metto il tuo blog in feeding

  31. Excelente informacion, tenia problemas para ver videos en Ubuntu + Compiz Fusion, no sabia donde arreglarlo, buena informacion, gracias

  32. @zcgt21:
    Prego! Sono contento che ti sia servita la guida 🙂
    spero solo tu capisca l’Italiano perchè io non parlo Spagnolo ma capisco quello che scrivi, ovviamente 😉

  33. Just so you know, this information has been posted (as well as cleaned up and updated) for a while now on the Compiz Fusion wiki, here:

    http://wiki.compiz-fusion.org/VideoPlayback

  34. thank you very much! i’ve just installed ubuntu 8.04 and, what is very strange, the movies were not working! but the biggest problem is that i couldn’t find any information about this problem :/ fortunately i found your page 🙂 greetings!

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