[SOLVED] Very small windows when playing videos, and other video issues

[milwbikerboy]

Hello all, new to Kubuntu, slightly new to Linux, (was running redhat and mandrake years ago). DO NOT want to go back to MS hehe.. Anyway, problem<s> I'm having I'm pretty sure are video/video driver related. Anytime i play back a video, with ANY of the players, I get maybe a matchbook size video window. If I drag the window larger, the video stops <freezes>, but i can still hear it playing. if I drag the window back small, it starts playing again from its current location. If I do the shift+alt+f12 key and go to low res, the video works fine. Although frame rate at times is 'slightly' jerky. If I go back to hi-res, does the small window thing again. Can't figure out where to start looking, so here's my info:

Dell latitude D800 laptop
running native screen res of 1900x1200, widescreen
nVidia geforce go 5200
Jaunty Jackalope 9.04
nvidia driver 173.14.16

also noticed the GL screensavers don't run very smooth. Most are maybe 6-8 frames per minute (yikes)

Any help would be welcome, or maybe a point in the right direction. Laptop and video work good on WinXP, so I know hardware is OK. But want to use linux, just need to get video issues fixed. I'm pretty technical with pc's, so maybe I can understand what you will tell me hehe..

Thanks all!

[lmilano]

Re: Very small windows when playing videos, and other video issues (I think)

Hi and welcome

Sorry to disappoint you, but it won;t be technical at all: can you go to the KMEnu, then go for Hardware Drivers, and activate the NVIDIA driver? (this is binary only, not open source but it's the least evil solution). This might help. Another typical fix is to disable Desktop Effects in System Settings. Although they are really cool, but if they get in the way (and sometimes they do), it's better to disable them ...

[milwbikerboy]

Re: Very small windows when playing videos, and other video issues (I think)

Yeah, was already running the nvidia supplied driver. Thought that would help everything, but when I run desktop effects, seems to interfere. Everything works fine with the effects off. I was just experimenting recently without them enabled. No big deal, guess I just need more powerful system

Thanks for the reply!

[lmilano]

Re: Very small windows when playing videos, and other video issues (I think)

Excellent, please mark the thread as [SOLVED]

This is usually an issue with the card not implementing some of the OpenGL methods used by compositing (Desktop Effects). If you really want them, you can try with just a couple basic effects, and add them one by one (assuming you wanna spend some time playing around ). It might work, even though I think you'll still have performance issues when playing HD video, 3D accel, etc., so it may not be worthwhile ...