Opened 11 years ago

Last modified 11 years ago

#2115 new defect

Flickering issues with Compiz Fusion when playing audio in console

Reported by: a.eibach@… Owned by: reimar
Priority: normal Component: core
Version: 1.0rc4 Severity: normal
Keywords: Cc: cehoyos
Blocked By: Blocking:
Reproduced by developer: no Analyzed by developer: no

Description

Hi there,

usually it is the user's inability of configurings thing correctly if they report you "mplayer bugs" which actually are none.
However, this time I'm very sure I know it IS a mplayer bug.

I'm on Debian Wheezy (which comes with Mplayer svn 34540) and I have Compiz installed plus the famous desktop cube with Atlantis (= fish tank) plugin.
This issue should probably be reproducible without using Atlantis at all though.

-

Reproduction of the video flickering bug:

  • Let's break things down to simple conditions by taking a random mp3 and playing it in console (I use LXTerminal on LXDE). Standard settings (which imply: -msglevel statusline=5).
  • Make sure that you get a "real-time display" of where you are in the mp3, i. e. current position. (This is the main culprit!)
  • If you are using Atlantis plugin in Compiz, make sure you have 'Render ground' switched on to witness the flickering a bit more easily.

(actual)
Rendered ground *frequently* flickers during the whole playback of the mp3.

(expected)
No flickering should occur; EXCEPT for some *sporadical* (!) redrawing actions of the plugin itself, which mean about 1 flicker per max. 45 secs.
(When mplayer plays back the audio, it really flickers in a unusually hectic fashion.)

(workaround)
mplayer -msglevel statusline=4 whatever.mp3
:)

(addendum)
The flickering problem appears to be related to the high frequency of updates on the very same x and y position when the playback advances, Once it's switched off, and "calmed down" by setting the msglevel 1 unit lower (or even off), the hectic flickering does no longer occur.

Change History (3)

comment:1 by cehoyos, 11 years ago

Cc: cehoyos@… added

Please provide your command line together with the complete, uncut console output.

comment:2 by reimar, 11 years ago

I kind of had hoped you would explain why you would think this is a MPlayer bug.
As far as I can tell from your description your combination of composition manager and terminal can't handle (frequent) terminal updates without causing flickering.
But that doesn't have anything at all to do with MPlayer?!?
And IMHO the whole point of using compiz is that there never ever should be any kind of flickering no matter what you do, I'd consider any case of flickering with compiz a bug or misconfiguration, even if it's only every 45 seconds.

comment:3 by a.eibach@…, 11 years ago

Hi,

frankly I didn't know of these specific "can't handle" issues, nor did I find any bug reports related to that anywhere (well, so far).
I can only report what I'm witnessing.

And @Carl Eugen ... I dunno what you're expecting to see with your demanded "command line"?

In fact it's the very same one in my (workaround) section, just that the value is '4' instead of '5'. Nothing too special.
And the next line is the "Playing..." status line, which tells you the current position where you're currently at. Nothing special either.
That's about it.

@Reimar, I should probably be more specific. It appears to be an "indirect MPlayer bug". Indirect, because MPlayer uses a displaying/on-screen-printing routine that causes the flickering. (Just about the same thing as with e. g. Amarok, where most issues can be traced back to Qt, not Amarok itself.)

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