Video Flicker Under Ubuntu 8.10...


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Well I got 8.10 installed and the accelerated video drivers work now with my ATI HD2600 Pro 512megs RAM AGP8x card, but when I play a video or use my TV tuner card I get an annoying flicker on the player's screen. Any ideas on how to stop this? Is there a certain driver I should install? I tried several from Synaptic to no avail....

My system is an Intel Pentium 4 with a 3.4GHz CPU, 2 Gigabytes of RAM, and 1 Terabyte of storage in total.

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I have the same problem with Kubuntu and VLC. Im using the ATI proprietary drivers and no video codecs installed after installing Kubuntu, just VLC own codecs it uses.

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Tried it. There is much less of a flicker, but it is still there. I even went to ATI's site and downloaded the most recent driver (8.10) but it tells me that it isn't compatible. Maybe ATI is still not taking their Linux drivers seriously? Anyone else having this problem with a flicker using them?

Ironically enough the non-accelerated generic drivers don't have a flicker problem at all.

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http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=611...mp;postcount=26

Just to everyone who reads this thread things which could help:

1) Changing the output of VLC to X11 (of course this only works for VLC)

2) Disabling all visual effects (did the trick for me)

3) Uninstalling Compiz

4) Adding "Option "TexturedVideo" "off" in the driver section in xorg.conf

Option 4 worked for me. Add the line under the device section.

If using ATI and your video only flickers when compiz effect are enabled then under the device section of xorg.conf under the driver option add

Option "TexturedVideo" "off"

This should fix it, you could try it with other display adapters but don't blame if it it messes up.

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For option 4:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

In this file, add the line

"Option "TexturedVideo" "off"

to the specified section.

Thanks. I wasn't quite sure how to do this since I've haven't messed with the Xorg.conf file before.

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X11 is software rendering. It may lag when watching high quality videos. A lot of people may not notice it cause everyone's got a monster CPU these days.

Didn't have this problem before and I'm using the same CPU at 3.4 GHz. Even under Vista with sp1 it didn't flicker.

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It worked fine on a previous version of Ubuntu with the same configuration?

It happens because of the way Compiz renders the desktop and the way the drivers work. (I'd try to elaborate more but I'd probably get most of it wrong and cause more confusion.)

That's why disabling Compiz fixes it. Using X11 kind of works around it but X11 doesn't give the best video quality (or so they say). From what people say on the forums it won't be fixed until they change the way desktop compositing works and/or ATI improves the drivers.

I've tried option 4 and it didn't work. The only "fix" that's worked for me is disabling Compiz.

Edited by Rob2687
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The ATI accelerated drivers are terrible in Linux, and I also experienced the same problems. This is why I don't use the accelerated drivers, and the videos run without flicker. I can even playback 1080p videos without a hitch

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