video too slow, audio out of sync on Feisty/UbuntuStudio

[D. Michael McIntyre]

My sound got busted on the system side somehow.  It MUST have been a Dapper 
security update, or else some general "Linux sucks" thing, because I had done 
absolutely nothing that could have remotely brought about the condition I 
found myself in.

So I hosed venerable old Dapper, and installed UbuntuStudio/Feisty in its 
place.

The first problem I have is that Mplayer is not playing videos at speed, and 
the audio is seriously out of sync with the video, on the order of seconds.

My first approach to that was to go enable the proprietary 3D crapola for my 
ATI video card.  It didn't help.  Videos in Mplayer are running about 1/3 too 
slow still, and audio is still way out of sync.

I also notice that Gwenview is about 200% slower than it used to be at drawing 
the image on the screen.

Something is busted, and my Spidey Sense(tm) tells me it's something I have 
fixed before, but I'm drawing a complete blank.

I was getting better video speed and better sync than this on Dapper with the 
plain non-3D "ati" driver.  At least before my sound on Dapper went kaput.

Maybe I should have just reinstalled Dapper.

Sigh.

I'm really getting fed up with this kind of crap, incidentally.  After all 
these years, I think I'd really like to buy a Mac and say to hell with all of 
this.
-- 
D. Michael McIntyre