video screens are transparent

[macken]

Hi all,, Using 64bit kubuntu. Mplayer works fine but when using kplayer, smplayer or any of the front end player for mplayer the screen is transparent. All you see is the wallpaper background. VLC works ok also. I have not been able to find the answer to this. All video players worked for almost a yr, not so now. I have been looking for the reason but have not been able to fix the problem.

Using 9500 nvidia card, amd dual core, 3gigs mem.

Anyone have any ideas on this, thanks

[lmilano]

Re: video screens are transparent

This is evidently a problem with mplayer. Have you tried running any of these application from the command line and looking from errors?

[macken]

Re: video screens are transparent

I'm not at all sure what you mean by running them from the camand line. There has been no error messages so far. The players think they are working correctly.

[lmilano]

Re: video screens are transparent

I mean opening a Konsole from the menu, and typing kmplayer, kplayer or whatever player you use, and see what happens while playing the media (if there is any meaningful output in the konsole)

Otherwise, we don't have enough info to help you ...

[Snowhog]

Re: video screens are transparent

Have you checked the configuration settings for kplayer? Advanced configuration

[macken]

Re: video screens are transparent

:~$ dragon player
dragonplayer(14617) Phonon::KdePlatformPlugin::createBackend: using backend: "Xine"
dragonplayer(14617): Attempt to use QAction "aspect_ratio_menu" with KXMLGUIFactory!
dragonplayer(14617): Attempt to use QAction "audio_channels_menu" with KXMLGUIFactory!
dragonplayer(14617): Attempt to use QAction "subtitle_channels_menu" with KXMLGUIFactory!
[mpeg4 @ 0x28c6f80]Invalid and inefficient vfw-avi packed B frames detected

This is what is in konsole. the movie plays with sound but just a clear window showing whatever is behind it. Kplayer and smplayer are the same. Elisa, mplayer and vlc all work fine.

kplayer
kplayer(14636): Attempt to use QAction "player_progress" with KXMLGUIFactory!
kplayer(14636): Attempt to use QAction "audio_volume" with KXMLGUIFactory!
kplayer(14636): Attempt to use QAction "video_contrast" with KXMLGUIFactory!
kplayer(14636): Attempt to use QAction "video_brightness" with KXMLGUIFactory!
kplayer(14636): Attempt to use QAction "video_hue" with KXMLGUIFactory!
kplayer(14636): Attempt to use QAction "video_saturation" with KXMLGUIFactory!
kplayer(14636): Attempt to use QAction "player_list" with KXMLGUIFactory!
kplayer(14636): Shortcut for KAction "options_show_playlist" "&Show Playlist" set with QShortcut::setShortcut()! See KAction documentation.
kplayer(14636): Shortcut for KAction "options_show_library" "Sho&w Library" set with QShortcut::setShortcut()! See KAction documentation.
kplayer(14636): Shortcut for KAction "options_show_log" "Show Message &Log" set with QShortcut::setShortcut()! See KAction documentation.

This is kplayer. movies is playing with sound but no picture, just a clear transparent screen showing window that is behind it.

[lmilano]

Re: video screens are transparent

Yep. Nothing useful unfortunately, but it was worth a shot. I would personally search for "mplayer" in Synaptic and see if I can reinstall it, and perhaps add any mplayer related packages that seem to make sense.

Another thing to try could be to make sure kubuntu-restricted is enabled:https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

[josefko]

Re: video screens are transparent

Did you check Kaffeine? You don't like it and neither VLC?

[macken]

Re: video screens are transparent

kaffine and vlc work fine and that is what I have been using. prefer smplayer but as above, it does not want to work.

will try and see if any thing is missing from mplayer, but mplayer itself works fine. I know it has to be something very simple.

[abominable]

Re: video screens are transparent

If you still have this problem try

Smplayer > Options > Preferences > General > Video > output driver set to X11 (slow)

And post back the results.

[EDIT ::] But I just found out that cairo-dock (with opengl) messes smplayer. Do you use cairo-dock? In my case starting cairo-dock with opengl caused me the results you mentioned above.