[rosshuts]

Dear All,

I have just installed Ubuntu 12.04 and also the lastest version of XBMC (11 Eden) and completed the process of importing my MKV files.

When I try and play a movie I can hear the sound perfectly but nothing is displaying accept for the time line at the bottom. If I select full screen then I have a black screen and can still hear audio. After a while XBMC crashes and then have to hard reboot my media centre.

I have installed VLC and played the same MKV files and the audio and visuals are working perfectly.

Up until this point I have been using Ubuntu 10.10 with Eden XBMC and never had a problem. This has been my default setup for at least 2 years but wanted to upgrade to the latest version of Ubuntu. Previously when trying Ubuntu 11 I had awful screen tearing and even with the compiz advanced manager installed and turning on Sync to Vblank which I normally do with Ubuntu 10 I couldn't stop the screen tearing. As version 12 is now out I thought I would give it a shot and the audio and screen tearing is working like a dream (at least when playing my mkv files in VLC). I guess I could stick to VLC but obvioulsy I love XBMC and what it has to offer so hopefully somone can help me out with this issue.

I have a nVidia Geforce 9300 GFX card running off of my Zotac ITX mo-bo. The latest drivers are installed and everything seems to going well so far apart from actually playing mkv files in XBMC.

I have searched the forum and there is some info on this but with ATi cards and XBMC running on WIndows 7 which is not going to help me especially when the answer was to upgrade the ATi CCC.

If anyone can help with this I would be most grateful and if you need any more info then please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Ross

[teeedubb]

Tried turning off desktop effects? You could also try updating/downgrading/reinstalling video drivers...

[Plaguester]

Are you running XBMC inside the normal Ubuntu desktop session or did you log into the XBMC session? If you're doing the former, try the latter and see if you get the same effect. Can you post your settings under Settings > System > Video and Settings > Video > Playback?

[rosshuts]

I am running XBMC inside Ubuntu, I used to have a login session straight to XBMC in previous versions of Ubuntu and didn't realise you can still easily do it like before but I am not really fussed at this stage as happy to log straight into ubuntu.

Thanks for your help teedubb and Plaguemaster, I had a quick look at how to turn off desktop effects and can't really see how to do it as most comments on google suggest that you need to turn off unity but its not easy or recommended?

My settings are as follows:-

Display mode - full screen 1
Resolution - 1920x1080
Vertical blank - let driver choose (have changed these settings to always enabled etc and still no joy)
Enable LCD/vid - not on.

Playback settings are as follows:-

Render method - auto detect.
Allow hw accel vdpau - on
Allow hw accel Vasari - on
Adjust refresh rate to match video - off
Sync playback to display - off

The other settings are default and don't look related but if you need more info please let me know.

As with the drivers, when first installed I had a choice of two nvidia drivers, the one I chose was the recommended one. The other listed it was post release updates and version current updates. I assumed or always assume that I need to go with recommended. In the past on my old Sony Bravia LCD tv it didn't like the anything but recommended as audio would never work. I now have a Samsung led and will try changing to see what happens and then post my findings.

Thanks again.
Ross

[rosshuts]

Hi Again,

I changed the driver to the non recommended version, bounced my system and audio fine still which is good unlike previous TV, but the films are still not playing in XBMC. Getting the timeline at the bottom and hearing audio but nothing to display.

I looked in compiz manager and disabled the unity plugin and sadly the entire destop dissapeared so ran the terminal cmd of unity --reset and back to normal again so not really sure where or how to turn off desktop affects with ubintu 12.

Cheers,
Ross

[teeedubb]

When you log in select the unity 2d option..