Choppy video playback *unless* the mouse is constantly being moved.

This is my first bug submission. Thanks for your patience if I've made errors or followed incorrect procedure. Happy to help out however I'm able.

VLC has Choppy video playback unless the mouse is being moved. It appears to be skipping frames at a fairly constant rate (no contrasting periods of choppy and smooth playback). This excessive frame skipping is present in both fullscreen and windowed modes. Moving the mouse around (anywhere on the screen) makes the video display smoothly. Choppy playback begins the instant the mouse stops moving, even in fullscreen, where the playback is also choppy for the couple of seconds where the on screen controls remain visible after mouse movement ceases.

Workaround (clue?): If I open a video with smplayer http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/, play or pause it, the VLC frame skipping issue disappears. I can even minimise smplayer and VLC will continue with smooth playback. Curious that playing videos directly with mplayer doesn't have the same effect.

I reset my VLC preferences but no change. Previously, the video output was set to "XVideo output (XCB)".

I've tested a few different video types (different codecs) with no improvement.

Version:

VLC media player 1.1.12 The Luggage (revision exported)\ VLC version 1.1.12 The Luggage (exported)\ Compiled by buildd on allspice.buildd (Oct 20 2011 06:28:53)\ Compiler: gcc version 4.6.1 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.1-9ubuntu3)

OS:

Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot"

Kernel:

Linux hal9000 3.0.0-13-lowlatency #​21~ppa1-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Tue Oct 18 06:45:34 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux \(Bug was also present with the standard Ubuntu kernel: 3.0.0-14-generic.)

Video Driver:

fglrx-8.92

Desktop Environment:

Gnome 2.32.1

Hardware: (lshw -sanitize -short)

H/W path            Device      Class          Description
==========================================================
                                system         To Be Filled By O.E.M.
/0                              bus            A8V Deluxe
/0/0                            memory         64KiB BIOS
/0/4                            processor      AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+
/0/4/5                          memory         128KiB L1 cache
/0/4/6                          memory         512KiB L2 cache
/0/3c                           memory         2GiB System Memory
/0/3c/0                         memory         1GiB DIMM DDR Synchronous 400 MHz (2.5 ns)
/0/3c/1                         memory         1GiB DIMM DDR Synchronous 400 MHz (2.5 ns)
/0/100                          bridge         K8T800Pro Host Bridge
/0/100/1                        bridge         VT8237/8251 PCI bridge [K8M890/K8T800/K8T890 South]
/0/100/1/0                      display        RV730 Pro AGP [Radeon HD 4600 Series]
/0/100/1/0.1                    multimedia     RV710/730
/0/100/8            scsi0       storage        PDC20378 (FastTrak 378/SATA 378)
/0/100/8/0.0.0      /dev/sda    disk           120GB WDC WD1200JD-00H
/0/100/8/0.0.0/1    /dev/sda1   volume         107GiB EXT4 volume
/0/100/8/0.0.0/2    /dev/sda2   volume         4693MiB Extended partition
/0/100/8/0.0.0/2/5  /dev/sda5   volume         4693MiB Linux swap / Solaris partition
/0/100/9            eth1        network        RTL-8169 Gigabit Ethernet
/0/100/d            wlan0       network        RT2800 802.11n PCI
/0/100/f            scsi4       storage        VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller
/0/100/f/0.0.0      /dev/sdb    disk           120GB WDC WD1200JD-00H
/0/100/f/0.0.0/1    /dev/sdb1   volume         100MiB Windows NTFS volume
/0/100/f/0.0.0/2    /dev/sdb2   volume         111GiB Windows NTFS volume
/0/100/f.1          scsi5       storage        VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE
/0/100/f.1/0        /dev/cdrom  disk           DVD RW DW-Q30A
/0/100/f.1/1        /dev/sdc    disk           500GB WDC WD5000AAKB-0
/0/100/f.1/1/1      /dev/sdc1   volume         465GiB EXT3 volume
/0/100/10                       bus            VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
/0/100/10.1                     bus            VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
/0/100/10.2                     bus            VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
/0/100/10.3                     bus            VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
/0/100/10.4                     bus            USB 2.0
/0/100/11                       bridge         VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
/0/100/11.5                     multimedia     VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller
/0/100/11.6                     communication  AC'97 Modem Controller
/0/101                          bridge         K8T800Pro Host Bridge
/0/102                          bridge         K8T800Pro Host Bridge
/0/103                          bridge         K8T800Pro Host Bridge
/0/104                          bridge         K8T800Pro Host Bridge
/0/105                          bridge         K8T800Pro Host Bridge
/0/106                          bridge         K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
/0/107                          bridge         K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
/0/108                          bridge         K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
/0/109                          bridge         K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
/0/1                scsi7       storage
/0/1/0.0.0          /dev/sdd    disk           4047MB Cruzer
/0/1/0.0.0/0        /dev/sdd    disk           4047MB
/0/1/0.0.0/0/1      /dev/sdd1   volume         3859MiB Windows FAT volume

thanks,

Aaron

assigned to @Courmisch

added Component::Video: X11 label

unassigned @Courmisch

changed milestone to %Bugs paradize

Patch welcome.

I switched to XFCE from Gnome. VLC seems to be running a little better. Fewer frames are being skipped. But the problems still remains. As soon as I start moving the mouse around vlc plays smoothly again.

Since the problem has proven unreproducible I am going to have a look at the latest source myself. I'm a mid-level software developer and I want to support the open source movement and VLC is the best media player for X11 I've seen so far. I didn't notice the problem before I upgraded from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10 so maybe VLC itself isn't what's causing the problem.

This really does not look like a VLC bug. My best guess would be power management or frequency scaling.

added Status::not VLC label

closed

For anyone with similar problem, I think it's related to this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fglrx-installer/+bug/763005

It is a problem with ATI's proprietary driver fglrx when the tear free desktop option is enabled. If disabled, videos play with with normal frame rate but terrible noticeable tearing. Enabling causes the slow framerate (unless mouse is moving). Best guess, vlc's output being written to some buffer but the visible display not being refreshed at a fast enough rate and the mouse moving event manually forces quicker redraw. But I'm just conjecturing.

I was able to fix by installing Compiz and then changing the Vertical Sync setting. Solution I found in the link supplied above, and other places I've found googling. Others have has similar symptoms.

Unfortunately, Compiz uses too much overhead for my system so I had to uninstall and revert to XFCE's window manager (XFWM). I'm been looking for similar vertical sync or refresh wait setting in XFCE but haven't found yet. I remember the same problem in Gnome's window manager but I haven't tested recently to confirm.

Thanks.

This thread mentions the symptoms I'm having and a link to the compiz solution:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1700411