Gnome Shell... fixed my video tearing???

[Roasted]

I have a high definition live concert here on my system. I fire it up and oh my gosh does it look great. Oh, except that massive tear across everybody's face. It makes playing movies and whatnot on Linux just unbearable because it's constantly there.

I've been tinkering with the Ricotz PPA of Gnome Shell recently. Out of curiosity I was like, well, let's see how DVD/multimedia video playback is.

System is as follows:

Quad Core 2.33ghz, 4gb DDR2 800 RAM, Nvidia 9600 GT 256bit 512mb RAM PCIEx16 2.0, 19" 1440x900 24" 1920x1080 twinview, Nvidia 185 drivers.

Ever since I began on Ubuntu (6.06) I have used Nvidia.
Ever since I've been on Ubuntu, I've had video tearing.
Different systems. Different Nvidia cards. Always tearing.

Fired up this live concert (Oasis @ 2008 Wembley. Amazing) and fast forwarded to where a guitar solo was going on. Lots of lights, quick movements, basically an area I would ALWAYS see high amounts of tearing.

As expected, tons of tearing.

Ran gnome-shell --replace, fired up the same video, fast forwarded to the same part...

No tearing...

WHAT! Really? Wow. Seriously? Tons of different hardware configs. Tons of different Nvidia drivers. Always had tearing. And Gnome Shell solved it? And Gnome Shell is in... what... alpha stage? Beta stage?

Note - I will say this. I get little to no tearing on my 19". I've only ever used 22" or larger for my primary monitor, which is where I've had the tearing. Smaller the video box, less likely it is to see video tearing. But I've always had it on my 22" and 24" main monitors. But like I said, it looks like using GS I don't have it.

Note to self - when playing a movie, use GS if you're not already using it.

[sys32592]

I have been lurking for quite some time (been an Ubuntu user for years now) and *finally* decided to register since I read your dilemna. I have the same Nvidia card, and the tearing was getting to me for the longest time. I swapped cards with an ATI Radeon 4600 series model and the tearing was STILL there.

Well, I went back to my trusty Nvidia card determined to find the solution. It has a lot to do with the desktop visual effects in Ubuntu (even set to normal), so turn them to "none". Also, run your nvidia-settings and turn the OpenGL all the way up to "High Quality".

After adjusting these two settings I have absolutely zero video tearing. Hope that helps!

[Roasted]

I have been lurking for quite some time (been an Ubuntu user for years now) and *finally* decided to register since I read your dilemna. I have the same Nvidia card, and the tearing was getting to me for the longest time. I swapped cards with an ATI Radeon 4600 series model and the tearing was STILL there.

Well, I went back to my trusty Nvidia card determined to find the solution. It has a lot to do with the desktop visual effects in Ubuntu (even set to normal), so turn them to "none". Also, run your nvidia-settings and turn the OpenGL all the way up to "High Quality".

After adjusting these two settings I have absolutely zero video tearing. Hope that helps!

Well I certainly appreciate you registering just to respond to my post! However, I already have compiz effects completely disabled and I still had tearing. I did not try the high quality settings with OpenGL though... I'll give that a shot when I get home.

Can anybody who knows what's "under the hood" of the current Gnome versus Gnome Shell help me understand why they're so different to give me different (and positive) results?

[Roasted]

Desktop Effects - None.
OpenGL Settings - High.
Video Tearing? Yes.

The one positive thing to say about this is I don't have tearing in Dragon Player in Kubuntu and I also don't have tearing in Gnome Shell. So regardless, whatever I upgrade to from Ubuntu 9.10 in the near future, I'll have a fix (FINALLY) at that point.

[k64]

It's probably Clutter, the toolkit that GNOME Shell is based on, that is helping. GTK+ does a pretty bad job at video playback.

[Roasted]

It's probably Clutter, the toolkit that GNOME Shell is based on, that is helping. GTK+ does a pretty bad job at video playback.

That's what I was thinking too. It's a shame GS isn't further along in development. I wouldn't mind running it full time if more features were implemented and it was a bit more stable.

Can't knock alpha/beta software for lack of stability though.

[sports.car.guy]

This has nothing to do with Gnome. It has everything to do with the setup of the video driver. With nVidia, unlike AMD at this time if you go into the configuration app, you can enable vertical syncing for video. Well AMD has it sorta but still a work in progress at this point.

Enable that, and it should solve the problem because by default it is not enabled on nVidia.

[Roasted]

This has nothing to do with Gnome. It has everything to do with the setup of the video driver. With nVidia, unlike AMD at this time if you go into the configuration app, you can enable vertical syncing for video. Well AMD has it sorta but still a work in progress at this point.

Enable that, and it should solve the problem because by default it is not enabled on nVidia.

I'm quite certain it has more to do with Gnome. I've heard countless times the way GTKT applied video feedback was very poor, and I'm seeing proof of it now.

BTW - I did not see "vertical syncing" in the nvidia-settings control panel, however I do have sync to vblank enabled already.

Not sure what else I can do, but there's one thing I know.

Gnome Shell fixed my video tearing. This is a good sign, at least for future usage of Gnome. It'll be nice to actually play a DVD on here and not want to punch my computer in the face.

[turbodellmini]

Just thought I'd pop in and confirm that I too noticed this phenomenon. I've been struggling with video tearing since day one on my macbook pro (8400M GT). I eventually gave up.

After hearing about gnome shell I decided to give it a go and I was dumbfounded. All video tearing gone. If only gnome shell were more functional at the moment I would be a full time user!

[sports.car.guy]

This tread should be a definite read then for a lot of Ubuntu users with AMD graphics, like that Mac Book does (Well I believe it does). Most of the complaints about AMD GPU's with Ubuntu is tearing and not to the extent I have ever seen on Kubuntu before doing a couple graphics tweeks that get rid of it.

That is why I said what I said about the tearing. It is because that is usually how you go about trying to get it straight with AMD. Some after still complain about major tearing and this could very well be why.