Media player issues since the Hardy upgrade

[Linuxgirl]

Hi,

first let me say that this is the first time that I am experiencing problems with playing videos in Kubuntu on my HP laptop (everything was fine in 7.04 and 7.10). Since the upgrade, none of the media players ( kaffeine, vlc) are able to play movies. Well, that's not entirely true: the movie is only "watchable" if the player window covers half the screen. If I try to enlarge it or set it to full screen, it sort of "flickers" as if the frames didn't follow themselves correctly (a kind of slow motion but not really).Let me add that if I enlarge the window in small steps (a centimeter a time) the window stabilizes after awhile, yet I can only do this to a certain degree ( like 3/4 of the screen). As soon as the window gets larger, it never stabilizes. A friend of mine said that this is due to the fact that my graphics card is not properly installed ( Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100, VESA driver). I tried to find the drivers on the Intel page, but AFAIK they only exist for Windows...
I also tried System Settings->Monitor&Display->Hardware and chose intel 965 (as this is the chipset my laptop uses...at least I think so ) and the screen got borked (and I managed to fix that all by myself, imagine that!).
I am not sure what to do next and would welcome any recommendations before I ruin anything

[Snowhog]

Re: Media player issues since the Hardy upgrade

Verify first, that all required packages for DVD playback in my HOWTO: Get commercial DVD playback in Kaffeine are installed.

[Linuxgirl]

Re: Media player issues since the Hardy upgrade

Thank you for the reply Snowhog.

I followed your instructions, but the result is still the same. The movie players play DVDs and regular video formats (.avi...) only in a small window, and I really don't understand what makes them flash and flutter when they're enlarged. I mean, it either works or it doesn't, right?



P.S.:
Snowhog - I really liked your HowTo though. Straightforward, simple and comprehensive.Very nice

[LordBeeDoO]

Re: Media player issues since the Hardy upgrade

Hi, i would suggest you to try to install mplayer a try to run a film by: mplayer -fs -vo=xv film.avi

Mplayer will install new libraries, so we will see ... it looks like some problem with drivers and xine, mplayer uses also other display methods

[Linuxgirl]

Re: Media player issues since the Hardy upgrade

Hi,

thanks for the advice - it did not fix my problem entirely, but now the player window actually covers about 80% of the desktop, so I guess it's better. Still can't watch movies in full screen mode but I must say they "flicker" less than in Kaffeine. Another side effect of it all is that when I enlarge the screen there's a dotted vertical line at the right-hand side of the player window (in all three players).

This is what you get for not listening to the wise and experienced and upgrading via adept...I just couldn't help myself

[Snowhog]

Re: Media player issues since the Hardy upgrade

Unless you know that your video card is capable of full-screen video display (worked as such previously in 'other' OS?), it simply may not be capable of operating in full-screen mode.

[Linuxgirl]

Re: Media player issues since the Hardy upgrade

Everything was fine in 7.04 and 7.10, full screen is still fine in Vista (dual boot). That's why the video card is not my prime suspect. Maybe the older version of VESA drivers was different than the one I am using now?