Screen switches off or screen saver starts when watching video

[Gijsbertus]

Dear Kubuntu people,

There is this little problem I have been struggling with since having installed Kubuntu 14.04 (which I love).
Each time I start watching video, doesn't matter via what application, after some time the screen saver kicks in, or the screen dims and then switches off.
I have been trawling the internet and on Ask Ubuntu I found that one should install a programme called 'caffeine'. This I have done but so far I haven't noticed any effects: the problem seems to remain. Another odd thing is that there is no dialogue or display or drop down menu or so appearing with which to toggle caffeine on or off, or change settings.

Is there anything I should do to solve this problem?

Thanks,
Gijsbertus

(P.s. apologies for English, not a native speaker)

[vinnywright]

ya ,,,,,,,I see this with some players on my box but VLC will play without the power management dimming the screen ,, you can turn this off in system settings>power management>energy saving ,,,,,,uncheck the box dim screen after so many seconds.

their may be other ways but these I know

VINNY

[Gijsbertus]

Thanks very much. The problems seems to be happening especially when playing video in the browser, like You-tube videos. It seems caffeine has been devised to deal with this issue but somehow I cannot get it working.

[SteveRiley]

I have been trawling the internet and on Ask Ubuntu I found that one should install a programme called 'caffeine'. This I have done but so far I haven't noticed any effects: the problem seems to remain. Another odd thing is that there is no dialogue or display or drop down menu or so appearing with which to toggle caffeine on or off, or change settings.

There is no package in the repositories named caffeine. There is one called kaffeine (starts with "k"), but it isn't anything that controls the screen. Instead, it's an old media player that was last updated in April 2011 and has been abandoned by its developer. Kaffeine relies on Xine, a set of multimedia player libraries for Linux. Xine prevents the screen from sleeping by periodically sending the ScrLk signal to the PC, to make the PC think there was an interaction by a human. This is probably why you read about references to Kaffeine and preventing screen timeouts.

There are a couple solutions. First, however, I'd recommend you remove Kaffeine, beacuse it's no longer maintained:

sudo apt-get purge kaffeine
sudo apt-get --purge autoremove

If you like using the command line, you can disable the X Server's display power management easily with xset -dpms.

Or you can use disable it permanently in System Settings -> Power Management -> Energy Saving. Disable Screen Energy Saving.

[SteveRiley]

Hm, I see you asked the same question in two separate threads. I've answered here. I will delete the other one.

[Gijsbertus]

Thanks

Oops, sorry, thought one should have one post for each problem. Thought these were two separate problems, but now see that that probably is not the case. Beginner's mistake. Thanks for correcting.

Hm, I see you asked the same question in two separate threads. I've answered here. I will delete the other one.

[Gijsbertus]

There is no package in the repositories named caffeine. There is one called kaffeine (starts with "k"), but it isn't anything that controls the screen. Instead, it's an old media player that was last updated in April 2011 and has been abandoned by its developer. Kaffeine relies on Xine, a set of multimedia player libraries for Linux. Xine prevents the screen from sleeping by periodically sending the ScrLk signal to the PC, to make the PC think there was an interaction by a human. This is probably why you read about references to Kaffeine and preventing screen timeouts.

There are a couple solutions. First, however, I'd recommend you remove Kaffeine, beacuse it's no longer maintained:

sudo apt-get purge kaffeine
sudo apt-get --purge autoremove

If you like using the command line, you can disable the X Server's display power management easily with xset -dpms.

Or you can use disable it permanently in System Settings -> Power Management -> Energy Saving. Disable Screen Energy Saving.

Thanks very much. Kaffeine has been removed.
I was, however, aware of the difference between Kaffeine and Caffeine. I think I found Caffeine via this site: http://www.maketecheasier.com/preven...atching-video/. I was browsing for a solution to the problem, namely that I do like to keep power saving settings intact except when watching video (remembering that in my windows years this was not an issue). It seems for this caffeine has been developed so I thought it okay to get it and install it in my Kubuntu 14.04 set up. But that doesn't seem to work. Do not know why not, maybe because this is Kubuntu and not Ubuntu, but before getting Kubuntu I was told that that should not be an issue.

Actually: since starting this thread I have found the following: https://askubuntu.com/questions/4692...l-after-update. As well as this: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2230939

[SteveRiley]

Interesting! I'll admit that I jumped to a conclusion when you wrote "caffeine" along with mentioning display sleep issues -- because of Xine's ability to control that and because Xine is the back-end for Kaffeine. Thanks for clarifying.

I took a brief look at the code and it seems to be pretty specific to Gtk+. It may or may not work on KDE. Have you tried one of the older versions that still has the indicator icon?

[Gijsbertus]

I think that is the solution. I will do so and get back to this forum as soon as I have some result to report.
Thanks again!

[Gijsbertus]

I think that is the solution. I will do so and get back to this forum as soon as I have some result to report.
Thanks again!

It works. Installed caffeine according to instructions and it functions.

[Shabakthanai]

Open a Konsole and type in "xset -dpms" without the quotes. That should stop the energy savers. When you want to return to the way it is now, type in "xser +dpms" and things are back to normal.

[Gijsbertus]

Open a Konsole and type in "xset -dpms" without the quotes. That should stop the energy savers. When you want to return to the way it is now, type in "xser +dpms" and things are back to normal.

This is great. Thanks very much.