SMplayer under KDE no longer plays video

[mark phelps]

New to Kbuntu; have been using Ubuntu and Gnome for the past few weeks. Installed kubuntu desktop and was impressed by the features. Ran smplayer (originally installed under Gnome) and it worked. Later, tried running smplayer with some other videos and the player flashes quickly with the video image and then goes black. The audio works, though.

Installed KMPlayer from Synaptic, works OK. Mplayer works but the video is jerky. Really liked smplayer and would like to continue to use it under KDE.

If smplayer is a front-end to mplayer, and so it kmplayer, then why would kmplayer work and not smplayer?

Went to sourceforge and downloaded several different packages QT3, QT4, with and without KDE support. Installed, tested each of them in turn -- no success.

Any suggestions about anything I could check?

[disturbedite]

Re: SMplayer under KDE no longer plays video

i maintain gutsy packages on the ubuntuforums... and so do others for other versions. i've seen no reported problems like this.

try switching the video engine in the options...

[Rog131]

Re: SMplayer under KDE no longer plays video


About SMplayer ("A great MPlayer front-end" ):

Hmm - what says (when playing) : Options > View logs > mplayer (Ctrl + M)

[mark phelps]

Re: SMplayer under KDE no longer plays video

You were right about the video engine. Under Gnome, the video selection that works is xv; under KDE, it has to be X11.

I switched back to a Gnome session, uninstalled Smplayer, reinstalled, and checked the parameters. Then, I switched back to a KDE session and the video didn't play anymore. After experimenting with different video settings, the selection of X11 was the one that worked.

Interesting thing is that Kmplayer worked from the get go. Guess it must have selected the correct video engine by default.

[disturbedite]

Re: SMplayer under KDE no longer plays video

well, no it doesn't have to be x11 on kde. it just means something is wrong on your end. but of course just switching the engine is a temporary workaround.

[mark phelps]

Re: SMplayer under KDE no longer plays video

Well, yeah -- of course it's something wrong "on my end", but that doesn't help.

What does help is abandoning KDE and going back to gnome. I've been using that exclusively for a week now (as I did when I first installed Ubuntu), and everything works -- OSS (for sound), ATI video hardware accel, Mplayer, SMPlayer, Even KMPlayer and Kaffeine work well.

So, as a test, I switched desktop sessions to KDE last night -- and within a few minutes, the machine became unusable. OSS no longer worked (invoking any oss programs produced "segmentation faule", running any multimedia player expect KMPlayer produced black screens, etc. So, something is wrong with KDE "on my end".

What's odd is that most of the KDE apps work OK in gnome, and I didn't uninstall KDE, I just switched desktops. I was simply going to uninstall KDE, but the dependency list is HUGE. And besides, that's not really going to clean up my system. So, I'm gearing up to do a complete reinstall of 7.04 (gnome) and then adding kde desktop. Will see what happens from a "vanilla" install.