[SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

Caspian · 2012-10-13 16:12:40

Hi everyone,

I'm experiencing significant video tearing on full screen videos under kde 4.9. I've read many posts and suggestions and have tried most of them:
-disabling vsync
-disabling effects
-disabling OpenGl 2 shaders
-trying several video players such as mplayer, vlc, etc....

No matter what I'm experiencing video tearing which is mostly visible on the top of the video. Any suggestions would be very welcome. I managed to solve these issues in Gnome by adding "CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws:disable-culling" to /etc/environment...
I apologize if this has already been solved and written, I simply couldn't find anything that was helpful in solving this issue.

Last edited by Caspian (2012-10-16 08:28:36)

stressat · 2012-10-13 17:27:39

System settings- multimedia- phonon- backend: install and change gstreamer with phonon-vlc or phonon-mplayer-git (AUR).

Caspian · 2012-10-13 17:34:58

Thanks for your reply stressat. I've changed the frontend to vlc but this didn't help as well. Still the same tearing...

cfr · 2012-10-13 23:09:25

Which acceleration method are you using? Have you tried the other one? Details are on the intel wiki page if you aren't sure what I'm talking about. (One is sna but I forget the name of the other right now.)

(I actually get more issues with the one which is supposed to do better but I rarely watch video.)

Caspian · 2012-10-14 08:29:05

I've tried the SNA acceleration method and nothing changed. I forgot to mention that there is a tearing while moving windows. It is not "hardware related" since this is not happening in gnome with the above mentioned fix...

Nimatek · 2012-10-14 10:08:00

I started experiencing the same issue. Enabling SNA, adding Option "TearFree" "true", and installing libva-intel-driver seems to have fixed it.

Caspian · 2012-10-14 18:08:46

Nimatek wrote:

I started experiencing the same issue. Enabling SNA, adding Option "TearFree" "true", and installing libva-intel-driver seems to have fixed it.

Hey Nimatek, thanks for the tip. I've added Option "TearFree" "true" along with SNA acceleration method. This solved the tearing problem, however now I'm having performance issues. It is so slow, it makes it unusable To change the topic a bit: I have Nvidia optimus in my lapto. I bet that most of you know the problems with optimus. I've read almost everything regarding optimus and bumblebee. I know that I can disable Nvidia and use only integrated Intel (this is what I'm using now). Does anyone know if I can do the opposite (disable Intel and use Nvidia)? I presume thta using Nvidia would solve the tearing problem as well...

Caspian · 2012-10-15 08:05:04

What ever I've tried so far didn't help at all except the SNA method along with TearFree option, but this makes the KDE unusable because it's very slow. I guess that I'll need to go back to Gnome... Anyone else experiencing this issue and can't solve it?

damiarch · 2012-10-15 17:31:12

Caspian wrote:

What ever I've tried so far didn't help at all except the SNA method along with TearFree option, but this makes the KDE unusable because it's very slow. I guess that I'll need to go back to Gnome... Anyone else experiencing this issue and can't solve it?

It appears to be a regression that appeared with the big update to Mesa 9 and the new Xorg server.

TearFree kills performance in KDE for me as well; for now, I fixed it by going into Desktop Effects->Advanced and changing the compositing type from OpenGL to XRender. Unfortunately, not all effects work with it but it at least provides a usable speed for me until this bug is fixed.

Caspian · 2012-10-15 19:34:31

Thanks for the reply damiarch. This seems to have solved my problem. Now using sna, TearFree option, xrender and everything seems to be in order. Do you know where can we track the status of this bug in order to know when it's been fixed?

damiarch · 2012-10-15 20:31:30

Caspian wrote:

Thanks for the reply damiarch. This seems to have solved my problem. Now using sna, TearFree option, xrender and everything seems to be in order. Do you know where can we track the status of this bug in order to know when it's been fixed?

Bug report here :
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55998

If you have time, please post your experiences there. The more confirmations, the better.

Caspian · 2012-10-16 08:28:19

Great! Will do. Marking this as solved (sort of)

snoxu · 2012-11-23 18:44:53

What's the status on this? Is the tearing in Kwin/opengl fixed?

I've also been experiencing video hickups in Gnome.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-10-13 16:12:40

[SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

#2 2012-10-13 17:27:39

Re: [SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

#3 2012-10-13 17:34:58

Re: [SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

#4 2012-10-13 23:09:25

Re: [SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

#5 2012-10-14 08:29:05

Re: [SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

#6 2012-10-14 10:08:00

Re: [SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

#7 2012-10-14 18:08:46

Re: [SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

#8 2012-10-15 08:05:04

Re: [SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

#9 2012-10-15 17:31:12

Re: [SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

#10 2012-10-15 19:34:31

Re: [SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

#11 2012-10-15 20:31:30

Re: [SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

#12 2012-10-16 08:28:19

Re: [SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

#13 2012-11-23 18:44:53

Re: [SOLVED]Video tearing with KDE 4.9 on Intel i915/ Optimus

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