Black screen when playing video (NVIDIA)

English Hardware
1

Hi All,

First of all, an useful introduction…

(Opensuse 11.1, 64bit, NVidia 9600GS)

I had nvidia drivers from Yast installed (180.51). Everything was working well buuuuuuuut… I wanted to try the beta version in order to test a bug I’m having with a java application… and yes, I did install it.

Uninstalled the drivers from Yast, then init3 -> sh ./Nvidia(xxxx).run and installed the beta.

(No luck with the Java thing)

Later, when I tried to go back to the stable (180.51), I uninstalled the beta with sh ./Nvidia(xxxx) --uninstall, cleaned everything at ‘usr/scr/linux’ with:
make mrproper
make cloneconfig
make modules_prepare
make clean
reboot

and Mesa drivers were there after the reboot.

Back to Yast, click on the Nvidia drivers as usual to install it, sax2, reboot aaand… yup, problem.

The problem is when I reproduce videos or try to use the webcam I see the small screen all in black (this is to clarify that the video reproduction is failing, not the whole enviroment). I can hear the sound on videos and yes, I can even take a picture with my webcam on cheese!! but I can’t see the image “live”.

I tried already reinstalling all the codecs, xine, qt libraries and nothing. Also, I have now installed the new 180.60 version manually installed of course, and the issue is still there.

NOTE: When going back to mesa drivers everything works. Also the problem is on every single desktop, I tried Gnome, KDE 3.5 and KDE 4.2. I guess the beta driver from nvidia left something somewhere that I should erase or change maybe on xorg.conf… I don’t know.

Sorry if I’m missing something, I tried to explain as much as I can recapitulating step by step.

If anybody had the same issue, help is appreciated.

Thank you very much!

2

Why do you believe its the nvidia driver and not the webcam driver?

Do you get a black screen with all of these command line methods we were using: webcam & microphone command line fun … - openSUSE Forums

You state “The problem is when I reproduce videos” ? What are you using to produce the videos? Do regular videos play (ie videos from youtube ? videos from other web sites? videoDVDs ? )

If you have a problem playing any videos? did you try changing the video output mode in your video players when playing videos? What happens when you turn off special desktop effects/3D (ie “the cube” ) ?

You are certain you have the correct codecs? You noted you tried already reinstalling all the codecs, xine, qt libraries … whose version of xine? videolan? packman? Did you mix videolan and packman packaged applications?

3

Hi oldcpu, thank you very much helping out here!

Well, of course I forgot to put many details so here we go:

I tried the commands from the post you suggested and I got, for the first comand, black screen with this output:

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:width=640:height=480:device=/dev/video0
MPlayer dev-SVN-r29116-4.3-openSUSE Linux 11.1 (x86_64)-Packman (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer TeamCan’t open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
Can’t init input joystick
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing tv://.
TV file format detected.
Selected driver: v4l2
name: Video 4 Linux 2 input
author: Martin Olschewski <olschewski@zpr.uni-koeln.de>
comment: first try, more to come :wink:
v4l2: your device driver does not support VIDIOC_G_STD ioctl, VIDIOC_G_PARM was used instead.
Selected device: USB2.0 1.3M UVC WebCam
Capabilites: video capture streaming
supported norms:
inputs: 0 = Camera 1;
Current input: 0
Current format: YUYV
v4l2: ioctl set format failed: Invalid argument
v4l2: ioctl set format failed: Invalid argument
v4l2: ioctl set format failed: Invalid argument
tv.c: norm_from_string(pal): Bogus norm parameter, setting default.
v4l2: ioctl enum norm failed: Invalid argument
Error: Cannot set norm!
Selected input hasn’t got a tuner!
v4l2: ioctl set mute failed: Invalid argument

Opening video decoder: [raw] RAW Uncompressed Video
VDec: vo config request - 640 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Packed YUY2)
VDec: using Packed YUY2 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
VO: [xv] 640x480 => 640x480 Packed YUY2
Selected video codec: [rawyuy2] vfm: raw (RAW YUY2)

Audio: no sound
Starting playback…
v4l2: ioctl set mute failed: Invalid argument
v4l2: 1111 frames successfully processed, -518 frames dropped.

Exiting… (Quit)

For the second one,I got the avi file and IT HAS VIDEO IMAGE, I’ll tell you later how I reproduced that. (I don’t know if it’s worth the command line output since it is working fine…)

For the third and fourth commands I got video files with sound, so everything went OK.

If I try to reproduce online videos like youtube’s I have no problem with that. I’m having problems reproducing AVI, MPEG, RMVB files and mms stream content with Kaffeine and Mplayer.

Digging a bit more, I have XINE libraries (1.1.15) from packman, but YAST is showing me some extra libraries (ver. 1.1.16) that I can not install because they create some conflict versions with the 1.1.15. (For example, libxine-codecs 1.1.16.3 require libxine1= 1.1.16 but the requirement cannot be provided). DVDs won’t even start on kaffeine. The only chance to reproduce video files is with MPlayer with the “gl2 driver” I bolded this because I know is important.Also, all the xine libraries I have are from Packman (USA package from Opensuse), nothing from VideoLan.

I’m “blaming” the nvidia drivers because everything started when I installed and uninstalled the beta one. If I turn off the 3D effects everything is the same. The only way to “fix” the problem is switching to MESA drivers by SAX2.

I know it sounds strange to “blame” the nvidia drivers because it sounds like “codecs problem” but everything was working fine before that beta test. A friend of mine told me something about “.dri” files that the nvidia beta drivers install and later doesn’t remove… but he was not clear with that and I haven’t found much info about it. Nevertheless I found at the xorg.conf that it loads some “dri” things and then sets some video parameters… but I don’t understand much about it, sorry. I did try making a buckup of the xorg.conf and remove the “dri” things to see if that could solve the issue, but I had no luck.

I don’t know which codecs the webcam uses to reproduce the video… as I said before, I tried cheese, skype and now the first command line in the thread you suggested.

Well, I don’t know if I answered all your questions, It’s been almost a year with Linux (Opensuse) and I’m learning things everyday. Thank you very much and all the people in the forum for the help!

4

On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 20:36 +0000, santasemilla wrote:
…snippy…

>
> Back to Yast, click on the Nvidia drivers as usual to install it, sax2,
> reboot aaand… yup, problem.
>
> The problem is when I reproduce videos or try to use the webcam I see
> the small screen all in black (this is to clarify that the video
> reproduction is failing, not the whole enviroment). I can hear the sound
> on videos and yes, I can even take a picture with my webcam on cheese!!
> but I can’t see the image “live”.
…

Not sure of the issue… but as a not so great workaround try using
x11 (aka xshm) for your video output (likely it defaults to xv).

My guess is that will work, albeit at a performance penalty… depends
on how much cpu muscle you have.

5

Great! I could change xshm in Kaffeine (KDE3) but not in kaffeine KDE4 as it has no XINE configuration option… Also, in mplayer I have no xshm among the options but, as said before, GL2 worked fine. …the only problem now is… how should I get video from my webcam?! I would like to have it on skype as it’s a cool way to keep in touch with family :stuck_out_tongue: (I’m in the USA and they are in Argentina… hehe)

Any way to find out how to change the output for the webcam… to see if I can do something of the sort of the “xshm”??

Also, I recognize that I’m having some problems with the xine codecs… that 1.1.15 vs 1.1.16 versions. Where would you recommend to get them from? (Of course after uninstalling the actual ones).

Maybe another useful info is the output of Kaffeine (KDE4) when trying to reproduce a DVD:

Luk@Bourne:~> KCrash: Application ‘kaffeine’ crashing…
sock_file=/home/Luk/.kde4/socket-Bourne/kdeinit4__0
libdvdnav: Using dvdnav version 1.1.16.3 from the xine project - Home
libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.10 for DVD access
libdvdnav: DVD Title: MODERN TIMES FILM
libdvdnav: DVD Serial Number: c2da031d
libdvdnav: DVD Title (Alternative): MODERN TIMES FILM
libdvdnav: Unable to find map file ‘/home/Luk/.dvdnav/MODERN TIMES FILM.map’
libdvdnav: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00f20000. Regions: 1 3 4

libdvdread: Attempting to retrieve all CSS keys
libdvdread: This can take a long time, please be patient

libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.VOB at 0x0000012e
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.VOB at 0x0000016a
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB at 0x000052d0
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Found 1 VTS’s
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Can’t seek to block 370
libdvdread: Can’t seek to block 370
libdvdread: Can’t seek to block 371
Unable to start Dr. Konqi

…thanks again!

Lucas

6

One typically gets most codecs they need by installing the packman packaged libffmpeg0 (which picks up codecs via its dependencies), w32codec-all, and libquicktime0.

What is the output of:

rpm --query --all 'libav*' 'libpostproc*' 'libswscale*' '*xine*' '*gst*' '*layer*' '*vlc*' | grep -v avahi | sort

this is from RedDwarf’s thread “Check your multimedia problem in ten steps” : Check your multimedia problem in ten steps - openSUSE Forums

Also, what is the output of:

grep -i driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I can’t help with Skype. I never use it.

7

On Wed, 2009-06-03 at 16:26 +0000, santasemilla wrote:
…
>
> Great! I could change xshm in Kaffeine (KDE3) but not in kaffeine KDE4
> as it has no XINE configuration option…

xine options can be changed with … xine!! :slight_smile:

I’m not an avid KDE4 fan… so who knows…

> Also, in mplayer I have no
> xshm among the options but, as said before, GL2 worked fine. …the only

The equivalent in mplayer is x11.

> problem now is… how should I get video from my webcam?! I would like
> to have it on skype as it’s a cool way to keep in touch with family :stuck_out_tongue:
> (I’m in the USA and they are in Argentina… hehe)

With regards to webcam. I use luvcview to test (only works for some
web cams).

For skype you might find that disabling udev device creation for your
webcam might fix the problem.

See:
http://forums.opensuse.org/applications/413678-kopete-not-detecting-my-webcam.html

8

Hi again,

The first output is:

banshee-1-backend-engine-gstreamer-1.4.3-1.2.1
gst-fluendo-mp3-2-37.3
gstreamer-0_10-0.10.23-16.2
gstreamer-0_10-devel-0.10.23-16.2
gstreamer-0_10-lang-0.10.23-16.2
gstreamer-0_10-libnice-0.0.6-8.7
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-bad-0.10.12-17.2
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-bad-lang-0.10.12-17.2
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-base-0.10.23-14.3
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-base-devel-0.10.23-14.3
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-base-lang-0.10.23-14.3
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-farsight-0.12.11-12.5
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-good-0.10.15-21.2
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-good-lang-0.10.15-21.2
gstreamer-0_10-schroedinger-1.0.5-42.pm.4
gstreamer-0_10-utils-0.10.23-16.2
gstreamer-utils-0.10.23-16.2
kde4-kmplayer-0.11.0-0.pm.2
libavcodec52-0.5-0.pm.3
libavdevice52-0.5-0.pm.3
libavformat52-0.5-0.pm.3
libavutil49-0.5-0.pm.3
libgstapp-0_10-0-0.10.23-14.3
libgstinterfaces-0_10-0-0.10.23-14.3
libgstphotography-0_10-0-0.10.12-42.pm.1
libgstreamer-0_10-0-0.10.23-16.2
libgstreamer-0_10-0-32bit-0.10.23-16.2
libpostproc51-0.5-0.pm.3
libswscale0-0.5-0.pm.3
libxine1-1.1.16.3-0.pm.2
libxine1-32bit-1.1.16.1-11.1
libxine1-codecs-1.1.16.3-0.pm.2
libxine1-gnome-vfs-1.1.16.3-0.pm.2
libxine1-pulse-1.1.16.3-0.pm.2
libxine-devel-1.1.16.3-0.pm.2
MPlayer-1.0rc2_r29116-2.pm.2
mplayerplug-in-3.55-0.pm.1
phonon-backend-gstreamer-0_10-4.3.1-4.1
phonon-backend-xine-4.1.3-4.1
pullin-flash-player-11.1-1.1
xinetd-2.3.14-129.35

Now, the second output is:

Driver         "kbd"
Driver         "mouse"
Driver         "synaptics"
Driver         "nvidia"
Driver         "nvidia"

The skype problem should be fixed if I can get video at my webcam somehow… I think :sarcastic:

I’ll try the 10 steps in that thread later to see if I can come up with something. …Are those outputs above useful? Can you see something is missing? (The Driver “nvidia” two times is for sure 'cause I use an external monitor with my laptop).

Thank you!!!
Lucas

9

They illustrate that you are NOT getting your gstreamer from Packman. Is there a particular reason why you chose not to use the Packman packaged gstreamer? This includes MANY applications, such as most of the "libg* " apps.

I also note you have 1.0.16 xine rpms. What makes you think you have 1.0.15 ? Why are you referring to 1.0.15 of xine ?? I see no evidence you have 1.0.15 libraries.

As to whether that has anything to do with your problem, I don’t know.

Clearly your web cam works with this nvidia driver, as we proved that above. What web cam do you have? What is the output of:
lsusb
Note you need usbutils installed for that command to work.

10

Where did you get those versions from? I do not believe they are stable SuSE-GmbH versions (or if they are, the “just” came out"). I do NOT know where you got them from.

The openSUSE versions on my PC are:
phonon-backend-gstreamer-0_10-4.2.0-40.18
phonon-backend-xine-4.1.3-4.2.9

Is this something to do with a KDE-4.x update? A gnome update?

11

Hi there,

yes yes, you change the xine options with xine :slight_smile: but not the video outputs in KDE4 (or at least I couldn’t) but it’s no problem for me to use kaffeine KDE3 at all so, that part is solved.

I tried luvcview and I get my usual now black screen… and the output from luvcview is:

luvcview 0.2.4

SDL information:
Video driver: x11
A window manager is available
Device information:
Device path: /dev/video0
Stream settings:
Frame format: YUYV (MJPG is not supported by device)
Frame size: 640x480
Frame rate: 30 fps

I also checked the udev device creation problem… but it seems that nothing is created.

12

The 1.0.16 and 1.0.15 are now stable 'cause I went to Software.opensuse.org and searched for XINE… and installed the 1.0.16 from there. But seems that that “conflict” was not the point because everything keeps being the same.

I don’t really know where I got those gstreamers… :expressionless: I’ll double check the packman repository

The output lsusb is:

Bus 008 Device 003: ID 04f2:b033 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 08ff:1600 AuthenTec, Inc. AES1600
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0b05:1751 ASUSTek Computer, Inc.
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 046d:c517 Logitech, Inc. LX710 Cordless Desktop Laser
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Thank you for your time and quick response!!

13

I think yesterday (or this morning) has been an update for KDE 4.2… so in the trial and error… I got the new ones (actually, for phonom-backend-xine, I have a new update available, the 4.3.1-4.1)

14

I think yesterday (or this morning) has been an update for KDE 4.2… so in the trial and error… I got the new ones (actually, for phonom-backend-xine, I have a new update available, the 4.3.1-4.1)

15

OK, that was just a “sanity check” to confirm you were using the correct driver. I note from here: Linux UVC driver & tools
that your webcam is listed:

04f2:b033  	USB 2.0 1.3M UVC WebCam (Asus M70VM notebooks)  	Chicony Electronics

and the uvc is the driver you need to be using.

I still don’t understand your 1.0.15 comment, as 1.0.16 is the packman packaged xine version. But I assume thats a mute point.

Anyway, I’ve lost track of your problem. Your webcam works. And you can play video with a judicious video output module setting. As noted, I can’t help with your skype efforts.

Good luck in that (skype).

16

Yup, you are right, they are from GNOME’s repository and seems that the priority of that repo is 20 while packman’s is 99. I guess that’s why.

Should I change the GNOME’s repo priority to 99 and choose for packman’s packages…?

wooow… seems that I’m learning lots of things today :sarcastic:

17

Thanks for the help and time Oldcpu, I really appreciate that!

Yes, everything is almost solved… but the webcam is not working properly. As I posted above, I don’t know why I get a black screen when trying also luvcview. That is strange. I know I have no conflict with anything and I can even record an AVI with it. But if I turn it on I see a black screen.

MOREOVER! Last minute test. I tried skype, Kopete and amsn. Now people can see me on my webcam, but I cannot see my preview neither the image coming from the other person’s webcam.

Thanks anyway!
Lucas