Since upgrading to Mythbunu 12.04 and Mythtv 0.25, my playback has been showing tearing and also the Unity top panel plus the Unity Launcher overlay the screen.
Is there a way to fix this?
You might want to consider openbox.
It's a bit hacky to set up, and not as "cool" as unity, but you can get a very low-resource desktop with all the important features, like application indicators
For a very basic, but full-featured desktop:
sudo apt-get install openbox lxpanel lxpanel-indicator-applet-plugin obconf lxpappearance
This will pull in some gtk2 packages and other dependencies, but not too much.
Also, gedit does make a backup. It makes a new file with a tilde; ie xorg.conf~ Be aware, each time you save a file this backup will be overwritten with a new backup.
After trying some suggestions about turning off compositing, I finally discovered how to do it so it stays off.
Note this only works for Mythtv or for a desktop where you don't need or want compositing, and uses nvidia (as far as I know).
First, run Unity in 2D ⋯ this makes the Unity stuff overlaying the playback go away.
To do this, when you log on, press the gear like button on the login screen and select Unity 2D. If you bypass the startup login, you can log out and then to this when you log back in.
Second, turn off compositing in the xorg.conf file.
This is how:
Open a terminal and type in…
sudo nano -B /etc/X11/xorg.conf
The move the pointer to the end of the file and type in these three lines:
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection
Ctrl-O
and <enter>
to save the changes, then Ctrl-X
to close. Note that with the -B
option, nano will save a backup copy as xorg.conf~
Then restart the X server or reboot.
If you are nervous about using the terminal to edit, you can use the text editor, gedit.
Open a terminal and type in gksu gedit
. After putting in your password, you can edit system files, Be careful...!
Use the open command to open Filesystem: /etc/X11/xorg.conf
and add the lines to the bottom of the file. Update: gedit does make a "~" appended backup file
Now, enjoy your Mythtv...!
If there is still tearing, one more thing you can do...
Edit your xorg.conf as above, this time adding a line at the end of the Section "Device"
Add this line:
Option "TripleBuffer" "1"
It now should look a lot like my HTPC xorg.conf file:
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
# commented out by update-manager, HAL is now used and auto-detects devices
# Keyboard settings are now read from /etc/default/console-setup
# InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
# commented out by update-manager, HAL is now used and auto-detects devices
# Keyboard settings are now read from /etc/default/console-setup
# InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
Option "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection
Section "Files"
FontPath "unix/:7100"
EndSection
# commented out by update-manager, HAL is now used and auto-detects devices
# Keyboard settings are now read from /etc/default/console-setup
#Section "InputDevice"
# # generated from default
# Identifier "Mouse0"
# Driver "mouse"
# Option "Protocol" "auto"
# Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
# Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
# Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
#EndSection
# commented out by update-manager, HAL is now used and auto-detects devices
# Keyboard settings are now read from /etc/default/console-setup
#Section "InputDevice"
# # generated from default
# Identifier "Keyboard0"
# Driver "kbd"
#EndSection
Section "Monitor"
# HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "SAMSUNG"
HorizSync 26.0 - 81.0
VertRefresh 24.0 - 75.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "GeForce GT 240"
Option "TripleBuffer" "1"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "TwinView" "0"
Option "metamodes" "DFP: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection
Good luck...!