Possibly-related video problems

[ZIYAD A. M. AL-BATLY]

On Mon, 2005-07-18 at 13:51 -0400, Ben Novack wrote:
> Well, that fixes the GL problem, although IMHO it should have been
> done for me when I installed the driver.
Installing the driver doesn't mean that you want to use it!  Maybe you
installed because you're planing to buy a new VGA adapter and you want
to be ready when you put it in your system.  Asking if you want to use
the newly installed driver would be great, though.

> 
> At any rate, the low quality of video playback remains... any ideas on
> how to troubleshoot that one?
> 
> ---Ben
> 
Most likely you're not using the XVideo device/driver (instead, you're
using the plain X11 driver).  This is weired!  As by default most media
player (even under other OSes like Windows) prefer to use the Xv (a.k.a
Overlay) to the normal plain graphics API (which is not optimized for
media playback).

First, make sure XV is working properly on your system.  Run "xvinfo"
and see what you get.  Here is the result on my system (after removing
unneeded lines):
        X-Video Extension version 2.2
        screen #0
          Adaptor #0: "NV17 Video Overlay"
            ...
            maximum XvImage size: 2046 x 2046
            Number of image formats: 4
              id: 0x32595559 (YUY2)
                guid: 59555932-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
                bits per pixel: 16
                number of planes: 1
                type: YUV (packed)
              id: 0x32315659 (YV12)
                guid: 59563132-0000-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
                bits per pixel: 12
                number of planes: 3
                type: YUV (planar)
              ...
        ...

The first line is important.  Also, most media player _require_ the
support of "YUY2 Packed" (or as it also known as "YUV Packed") *and*
"YV12 Planar" (it's other name is "YUV Planar").

If you have MPlayer run it from a terminal and use the option "-vo xv".

If you use Totem (with the Xine back-end) quit all running Totem
instances and remove the file "~/.gnome2/totem_config" and try again.
If that didn't work, edit the file "~/.gnome2/totem_config" and search
for the lines that reads:
        # video driver to use
        # string, default: auto
        #video.driver:auto
and change the 3rd one to become:
        # video driver to use
        # string, default: auto
        video.driver:Xv

Now try that.  I hope it'll fix your problem.  Again, if that didn't
help, just repost here.
Ziyad.