Weird Video Glitch in Linux Mint

[ChaosWarmech]

So I occasionally get a weird glitch with youtube videos. When I close the window the video will remain underneath everything and show through anything that is black. Text will become slightly discolored, and anything that is true black will have the video showing instead of black. As long as there's color it doesn't show through. It's such a weird glitch I haven't been able to find anything with google. It doesn't happen with every video; it seems to be pretty random. Anybody else ever experienced this? Any ideas?

 

[Eridger]

I've had this problem, though I hadn't noticed it with youtube videos. Mostly I saw it when I played a video and let it fall to the background, then had something play over it. Anything black would, like you said, be basically transparent and allow the video to show through.


What system are you using? What kind of GPU?

 

[ChaosWarmech]

Gateway P-6860 FX laptop. nvidia 8800 GTS.


I was also having a glitch in Ubuntu where youtube videos embedded in posts would flicker random black boxes. Watching them on youtube was fine, but embedded in posts they were extremely glitchy. I didn't look much into the subject but it looked like it might be the GPU not playing nice with Ubuntu. I just switched to Linux Mint and now videos play fine, it's just when I close the window it glitches. Think it's GPU related?

 

[3jane]

Haven't seen exactly that behavior but sounds a lot like a compositing issue, have you tried running with it off?


I think Mint uses the "nouveau" driver by default for nvidia cards, it's come a long way but is still pretty crappy for OpenGL acceleration and (I think) still does video decoding in software. If thats what you are running you really should look at switching to the "nvidia" dkms driver.

 

[ChaosWarmech]

I'm using an nvidia driver I enabled with "administration->additional drivers" is that what you meant?

 

[3jane]

Probably... I'm not familiar with Ubuntu/Mint GUI tools.


You can check from the command line, you should get an output something like this:

$ lsmod | grep nvidia

nvidia              10082726  58 

i2c_core               23725  1 nvidia

If you are already running nvidia, then its possible it is a GPU glitch.


Did you try turning off compositing? Ubuntu calls it "Desktop Effects" IIRC.

 

[ChaosWarmech]

nvidia               9331115  31 

agpgart                32075  2 nvidia,intel_agp

Yea, I always turn those off.

 

[3jane]

/stumped

 

[Eridger]

Nvidia, eh..?


I had this problem with two cards: A GeForce (fx?) 6200 and an ATI Radeon 4650. I don't have a clue as to why this happens. I never bothered to look up a solution, quite honestly. But your best best would be to ask over at ubuntuforums.org. Just... expect to wait a few days for an answer.


Oh, and if you find a solution for the embedded youtube video glitch, let me know. Oddly those embedded videos work just fine for me over at reddit, but nowhere else I know of.