Default video playback settings are bad

I have the same problem.

Linux bob-laptop 2.6.24-8-generic #1 SMP Thu Feb 14 20:40:45 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

boppp, in Totem if its dark, goto Edit->Preferences->Display, there you can change brightness, contrast, saturation, hue.

If you have VLC, when you play the movie, select Video->Post processing->6 (highest).

In MPlayer, right-click select "Preferences", "Video", then switch from "xv" to "gl".

The default settings needs to be improved!

the description seems to indicate a video driver issue, what video driver do you use? reassigning to the xserver-xorg-driver-nv driver but could be due to the closed source nvidia one

I am using the proprietary non-free official Nvidia device driver.

As Sebastien indicated, that this indicates a problem in the video driver, and you seem to be using the driver directly from nvidia, I'm marking this as invalid (we cannot fix 3rd party software). Or are you using the nvidia-glx/nvidia-glx-new packages from the repository? If so, please reopen.

Thanks,
    Stefan.

I am using the nvidia-glx-new from the repository.

The problem seems not to be the video driver, but the default settings in the media players.

The brightness xv problem might be connected to Bug 32963.
Btw. post processing can have a huge impact on CPU usage so it shouldn't changed per default. Some players activate it per default but vlc not.

Hi eldmannen+launchpad,

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? (ISOs are available from cdimage.ubuntu.com)

If it remains an issue, could you also attach a new /var/log/Xorg.0.log?
Thanks in advance.

The output of lspci -vvnn would also be worth having.

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express DRAM Controller [8086:29c0] (rev 02)
 Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device [1462:7360]
 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort+ >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel modules: intel-agp

00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express PCI Express Root Port [8086:29c1] (rev 02)
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx+
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 32 bytes
 Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0
 I/O behind bridge: 0000d000-0000dfff
 Memory behind bridge: fa000000-feafffff
 Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000d0000000-00000000dfffffff
 Secondary status: 66MHz- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- <SERR- <PERR-
 BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR+ NoISA- VGA+ MAbort- >Reset- FastB2B-
  PriDiscTmr- SecDiscTmr- DiscTmrStat- DiscTmrSERREn-
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
 Kernel modules: shpchp

00:1a.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:2937] (rev 02)
 Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device [1462:7360]
 Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
 Region 4: I/O ports at cc00 [size=32]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
 Kernel modules: uhci-hcd

00:1a.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 [8086:2938] (rev 02)
 Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device [1462:7360]
 Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0
 Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 21
 Region 4: I/O ports at c880 [size=32]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
 Kernel modules: uhci-hcd

00:1a.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:293c] (rev 02) (prog-if 20)
 Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device [1462:7360]
 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0
 Interrupt: pin C routed to IRQ 18
 Region 0: Memory at f9fffc00 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
 Kernel modules: ehci-hcd

00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller [8086:293e] (rev 02)
 Subsystem: Micro-Star Internati...

Hmm, i explored some settings in the different media-players and found post-processing was disabled by default. Adjusting most of the colour variables (hue, brightness etc) with the mouse wheel was odd, rolling the mouse wheel forwards decreased the value while rolling it backwards increased the value in almost all cases. I found i was able to set all except VLC to a good volume level for me but VLC kept forgetting what i had set it to. Xine was the only media-player that allowed me to configure my mouse wheel to adjust the volume but then it wouldn't change its function while the arrow was hovering over a different control, such as the timeline. I can't imagine many people switching to and remaining with Linux for long as a desktop machine while our media-players are so far behind Windows.

I'm using Ubuntu 8.10 with an ati graphics card and tried
Xine
GXine
MPlayer
VLC Player
XfMedia
but none of them came close to even poor Windows players in terms of user-configurablity. A shame because each of them seems like an excellent work and once tweaked seems to be more capable than many of the best of Windows. Also linux is much more pleasurable to work with, particularly because of the higher quality of packages and lack of paranoia at higher levels. Ubuntu is a good name for a linux distro but that feeling of freedom is prevalent in all the distros i have tried. Thanks all and happy christmas :)

Lol, i had forgotten about this and am on a machine using 8.04 - really bad movie playback but this bug reminded me so i swithed gstreamer-properties to "...(no Xv)", i'm guessing playback will now improve agains, as it did before.

I do have all the latest updates. Anyway, i'm glad activity here prompted me to change my settings :)

Thanks, good luck and regard from
Tom :)

Lol, i was just enjoying watching a movie when this email about an added tag arrived. One quickly gets used to quirks, perhaps even enjoy things more because of them. The players all work well enough to thoroughly enjoy.

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

This bug report was filed against an old version of Ubuntu.
Can you confirm whether this is still an issue in natty?

If you don't mind, it would be very helpful if you could update the bug
report in launchpad to 'Fix Released' if it is no longer an issue for
you, or if it is still occurring under natty, please tag the bug 'natty'
so it's easier for us to track.

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.