Mouse wheel volume control and video buffer in Linux VLC

[UserUnknown]

Hello,

I've been using VLC for quite a while now and I always liked it. You devs did a fine job.

I recently switched from Windows to Linux, Ubuntu, and noticed some differences in behaviour in the Linux version of VLC in comparison to Windows and was wondering if it's just some well-hidden settings that I overlooked:

1. In Windows, the volume control via the mouse wheel works on the whole VLC window except on the progress slider, in window mode as well as in fullscreen mode. Which is fine. In linux, though, the mouse wheel only changes volume when I move the mouse cursor directly over the tiny volume slider, which can be a bit hard to find when sitting far away from the screen while watching a movie. I'd prefer my mouse wheel to adjust my volume whenever it is hovering somewhere (except progress slider) over the VLC window, just the way it is in windows version of VLC out-of-the-box.

I imagine it has to do with the differences between windows and linux in handling focus for video output, and that in linux for the window manager the video does not "belong" to the VLC window. Is there an easy fix to this?

2. In Linux, when in fullscreen mode, my video output bogs down every now and then, usually continuing after one or two seconds with a lot of video artefacts that will be "cleared" after cut in the movie, but sometimes it even hangs like in a freeze frame and it takes much longer to resume normally. During all this time, the movie playback actually goes on normally, one can hear the sound and see the timer count normally, only the video halts. It happened in both, avi and mpeg files, but also a playback from DVD was not completely fluent, even though it didn't really halt, but rather drop single frames when there were fast changes on the screen.

Can this be solved with a buffer setting or something? I couldn't find anything like that. Nor did an update in Linux to the latest VLC version (0.9.8a) solve or change this. In Windows I never encountered this. Neither it appears to happen in Totem Movie Player, but I don't like that one because the mouse wheel does strange things there, and volume control is a pain in the behind. (Yeah, I'm aware of the discussions about what the mouse wheel should and shouldn't do in VLC...)

Some more information:
- I'm using Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid, now with VLC 0.9.8a, but issues were the same in 0.9.4.
- (As far as I understood it) VLC seems to use the GStreamer libraries for playback, which appear to be standard in Ubuntu. Would/could this be any different with another way of video output?
- In VLC I use the "XVideo extensions video output" as the video output module. All the other normal video output moduls either don't give any video, or make VLC crash, or I have a fullscreen video with something like two or three frames per second.

I hope I found the correct English words for my issues and I can be understood.
If someone has a solution to one or both of my issues, I'd appreciate any insight.
If you need more info, just let me know.

Thanks in advance
UserUnknown

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

1. No, windows and linux version should have the same behaviour, this is probably an ubuntu bug. Maybe to fix it, you need to compile your own VLC.
2. Probably a video card driver issue. Try other video output...

3. VLC doesn't use GStreamer at all.

Best

[UserUnknown]

Hello j-b,

thank you for your reply.

1. No, windows and linux version should have the same behaviour, this is probably an ubuntu bug. Maybe to fix it, you need to compile your own VLC.

Well, that I did. I configured the latest source code from this site with the option

Code: Select all

./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-glx

I had to use the --disable-glx option as I couldn't find a "GL development package" that worked with the configure script. Which one should be working? I tried with several ones from the repositories, without any change.

After satisfying a whole bunch of other dependencies and configuring successfully, I ran './compile'. That printed hundreds of lines of "WARNING :" which where displayed in yellow color. Is that normal? As it ran through without any real errors I figured it should be okay.

When I afterwards ran VLC, the only video output module I could use was "X11 video output" which got displayed in an extra window. The few other output modules (my previously installed version had much more modules, and the one that worked best there, "XVideo extension video output", wasn't even available now) didn't display any video output. Strangely enough, there also was the "OpenGL video output" choosable, despite the configure option --disable-glx. But maybe I understood that wrong?

The option "Integrate video in interface" had no effect, the video remained in a separate window. In fullscreen mode, the whole screen was made black, but the video was displayed in the original size in the top left corner of the screen. It didn't get scaled at all, it wasn't possible to get any kind of real fullscreen. And still, mouse volume control only worked when hovering over the volume slider on the controls.

All in all, my self-compiled version got really screwed up, it was even worse than the version I got from the DEB packages. If you have any pointers on what I might have done wrong, I'd be happy to try again.

For now, VLC (by now back to the DEBs) remains rather unusable for me as most videos are displayed with long and longer freeze frames. I hope that will be fixed when a new graphics driver is released.

So far,
UserUnknown

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Hello j-b,

thank you for your reply.

1. No, windows and linux version should have the same behaviour, this is probably an ubuntu bug. Maybe to fix it, you need to compile your own VLC.

Well, that I did. I configured the latest source code from this site with the option

Code: Select all

./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-glx

I had to use the --disable-glx option as I couldn't find a "GL development package" that worked with the configure script. Which one should be working? I tried with several ones from the repositories, without any change.

After satisfying a whole bunch of other dependencies and configuring successfully, I ran './compile'. That printed hundreds of lines of "WARNING :" which where displayed in yellow color. Is that normal? As it ran through without any real errors I figured it should be okay.

When I afterwards ran VLC, the only video output module I could use was "X11 video output" which got displayed in an extra window. The few other output modules (my previously installed version had much more modules, and the one that worked best there, "XVideo extension video output", wasn't even available now) didn't display any video output. Strangely enough, there also was the "OpenGL video output" choosable, despite the configure option --disable-glx. But maybe I understood that wrong?

The option "Integrate video in interface" had no effect, the video remained in a separate window. In fullscreen mode, the whole screen was made black, but the video was displayed in the original size in the top left corner of the screen. It didn't get scaled at all, it wasn't possible to get any kind of real fullscreen. And still, mouse volume control only worked when hovering over the volume slider on the controls.

All in all, my self-compiled version got really screwed up, it was even worse than the version I got from the DEB packages. If you have any pointers on what I might have done wrong, I'd be happy to try again.

For now, VLC (by now back to the DEBs) remains rather unusable for me as most videos are displayed with long and longer freeze frames. I hope that will be fixed when a new graphics driver is released.

So far,
UserUnknown

http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2009/0 ... 5-commands

[UserUnknown]

Hello again j-b,

http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2009/0 ... 5-commands

Thank you very much for that link. I did that and it worked wonderfully.

So, can this 1.0.0-git version be considered a stable release? Or is it still a development or beta version?

In this version my freeze-frame issues seem to be solved from what I could see so far.

The volume adjustment issue, however, remains. In fullscreen mode as well as in window mode, the mouse wheel still only can adjust the volume when the pointer hovers over the volume slider. So no change there, but as you stated before, that might be an ubuntu bug that becomes notable in VLC.

Many thanks,
UserUnknown

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Hello again j-b,

http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2009/0 ... 5-commands

Thank you very much for that link. I did that and it worked wonderfully.

So, can this 1.0.0-git version be considered a stable release? Or is it still a development or beta version?

In this version my freeze-frame issues seem to be solved from what I could see so far.

The volume adjustment issue, however, remains. In fullscreen mode as well as in window mode, the mouse wheel still only can adjust the volume when the pointer hovers over the volume slider. So no change there, but as you stated before, that might be an ubuntu bug that becomes notable in VLC.

Many thanks,
UserUnknown

1) Consider it as alpha development stage, but it is quite stable enough though.

2) No, no, no, read the preferences, hotkeys page.

[UserUnknown]

Hello again,

2) No, no, no, read the preferences, hotkeys page.

Thank you for pointing this out. But nope, no real change in behaviour there: In window mode, scroll wheel events will only be recognized when pointer is hovering over some part of the (grey) interface area, but not over the video overlay. And in fullscreen mode the mouse wheel would only change volume (or seek position, if set to "Position Control") when hovering over the appropriate volume or position slider.

I've even set the hotkeys for Volume up/down to Mouse Wheel up/down and tried all three "MouseWheel x-axis Control" settings in combination with that, but the manually set hotkeys where simply ignored when set to a mouse wheel event. Setting a keyboard hotkey there does work, however, at least once I figured out that VLC has to be restarted for those hotkey changes to take effect. A note in the interface might be helpful there , just in case that users are actually supposed to restart VLC to use changed hotkeys.

Oh, another thing: On my mouse I can "tilt" the mouse wheel sidewards. Linux recognizes those tilts as separate mouse buttons (scrolling are buttons 4 and 5, tilt are buttons 6 and 7 in xev and in several browsers), but when trying to assign the tilt buttons as hotkeys in VLC, they get recognized as Mouse Wheel up/down, as well, not as unique buttons. And buttons 8 and 9 of the mouse will not at all be recognized by VLC, even though linux has no troubles distinguishing between all those buttons.

What's the "Global" column good for? Should it already be possible to set global hotkeys? I couldn't figure out how to put any entries there. Double-clicking a cell in this column only lets me change the cell right next to it in the "Hotkey" column.

As soon as this really works as the settings page promises, I think it will be an extensive feature of VLC. In case it should already work, I'd be happy to help debugging.

On the other hand, as the 1.0.0-git version seems to be in heavy development and my version is already two days old , I will try recompiling a newer version as soon as I can. Maybe some of this is already fixed.

So far,
UserUnknown

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

You are doing something wrong. Changing the mousewheel setup works both in FUllscreen and in normal windows.

[UserUnknown]

You are doing something wrong.

Sorry, can't do much more than following your HowTo to the letter...

I'm gonna re-build the git version. I saw an --enable-debug option for configure in this wiki page. Does this really work only with the Windows version, as this page suggests? I will also compile VLC on another machine to see if anything differs there.

If you have any other suggestions about debugging options or places to look for some kind of error logs, please let me know. Both syslog and dmesg show nothing, and when I start VLC from the terminal, it neither displays anything that looks relevant.

Saludos,
UserUnknown

[UserUnknown]

Hello again,

I finally had the time to do all "tests" I had planned to do, so now I can report back my results.

About the difference in behaviour of the Mouse Wheel Volume Control:
I compiled VLC 1.0.0-git again, this time also on another machine that runs a freshly installed and up-to-date Kubuntu, so there is different hardware, different mouse, different window manager, different video driver and so on. Before that I also tested the VLC version (0.9.4) directly from the repositories on this machine. Additionally, just for the sake of the argument, I freshly installed a Mandriva One 2009 and tested its stable VLC version (0.9.2) and the one from its backports repositories, which is 0.9.8a.

All together I had 4 different linux installations (UbuntuStudio 8.10, Kubuntu 8.04, 8.10, Mandriva One 2009), 4 versions of VLC (0.9.2, 0.9.4, 0.9.8a, 1.0.0-git), 5 different window managers (KDE 3.5, 4.1 and 4.2, Gnome, LXDE; in case the focus thing had something to do with them) on three machines so far. Everywhere the behaviour was the identical:

• In windowed mode, the mouse wheel would effect the volume whenever the pointer hovers anywhere over the grey VLC GUI (well, except, of course, the window decoration), but not when hovering over the video overlay.
• In fullscreen mode, the mouse wheel would only effect the volume when pointer hovers over the tiny volume slider, which is really hard to target in fullscreen.
• In 1.0.0-git, when "MouseWheel x-axis Control" was set to "Position Control", then the mouse wheel would affect the position, but as well, only when hovering as stated above. Assigning the mouse wheel to "Volume up/down" in hotkey settings, didn't change that behaviour.
• In 1.0.0-git, the mouse wheel "Tilt" buttons (buttons 6/7) are recognized as "Mouse Wheel Up/Down" (buttons 4/5) as well. Buttons 8/9 seem not to be recognized by VLC at all.

So, even if this is really a bug in Ubuntu, then (some?) other distros seem to have done the same mistake.

Can't anyone running linux confirm that? It should, in the same manner, affect those people who prefer the mouse wheel to seek video position. Are there really any setups (except MS Windows version) where the mouse wheel works wherever the pointer is hovering in VLC? If yes, what setups? What distros and version? What graphics devices and drivers?

BTW: The --enable-debug configure option did not give me any additional output when running VLC from a terminal.

About the freeze frames I reported in my first post in this thread:
It got much better in 1.0.0-git. When in still happens, it would apparently also happen equally in other video players (I tried totem and mplayer) on my main machine. I found a forum thread somewhere that stated it could have to do with Compiz-Fusion being activated during video playback, and that Compiz-Fusion should be switched off to get rid of the freezing video. I will test that soon, it sounds somewhat plausible. (It doesn't, however, affect the mouse wheel issue.)

I'd really like this to work, sorry for being so persistent.
I hope this might help somehow, as j-b didn't indicate any other way to help debugging.

Regards,
UserUnknown

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

• In windowed mode, the mouse wheel would effect the volume whenever the pointer hovers anywhere over the grey VLC GUI (well, except, of course, the window decoration), but not when hovering over the video overlay.
• In fullscreen mode, the mouse wheel would only effect the volume when pointer hovers over the tiny volume slider, which is really hard to target in fullscreen.
• In 1.0.0-git, when "MouseWheel x-axis Control" was set to "Position Control", then the mouse wheel would affect the position, but as well, only when hovering as stated above. Assigning the mouse wheel to "Volume up/down" in hotkey settings, didn't change that behaviour.
• In 1.0.0-git, the mouse wheel "Tilt" buttons (buttons 6/7) are recognized as "Mouse Wheel Up/Down" (buttons 4/5) as well. Buttons 8/9 seem not to be recognized by VLC at all.

So, summary: You say that it works correctly over the GUI but not over the video and fullscreen?

[UserUnknown]

So, summary: You say that it works correctly over the GUI but not over the video and fullscreen?

Yap, correct. At least it did (or didn't) so in all my tests so far.

*UserUnknown

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

So, summary: You say that it works correctly over the GUI but not over the video and fullscreen?

Yap, correct. At least it did (or didn't) so in all my tests so far.

*UserUnknown

This seem to have borken lately... Let me check.

[IcePick]

Just bumping this for the latest news. How is it going?

I love VLC.

[Hans von Manesse]

I just saw this topic and tried it out, while running a radio stream "Musikwelle Schweiz".

With me (Ubuntu 09.10) it works all over the VLC-Window, except the one very top (brown undlined) line. VLC-Version: 1.0.5 Goldeneye.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

That line belongs to your windows manager, not to VLC. That's why.