system slow after using media player

[mariane_08]

After I play a DVD in Media Player I find that parts of my desktop are slower to refesh than before. Is this a memory problem and what do I do about it? The video memory in thihs laptop is fixed and I have 1GB standard memory installed which should be more than enough. Any ideas

On an unrelated issue is ther any way of increasing the volume. I have the volume all the way at max and while its just acceptable its not great

thanks

[jmadero]

for volume run this in terminal
sudo apt-get install alsamixergui

then from terminal
alsamixergui

max everything and see what you get.

As for the media player, what media player are you using? Also do you monitor your RAM use when you're using it and your CPU use? Use the top command in terminal to do this (or any other system monitor). Lastly, try another media player, if you're not using VLC I would suggest trying it

sudo apt-get install vlc

[mariane_08]

for volume run this in terminal
sudo apt-get install alsamixergui

then from terminal
alsamixergui

max everything and see what you get.

As for the media player, what media player are you using? Also do you monitor your RAM use when you're using it and your CPU use? Use the top command in terminal to do this (or any other system monitor). Lastly, try another media player, if you're not using VLC I would suggest trying it

sudo apt-get install vlc

OK Thanks, it appears I already have ALSA installed, and problem resolved. I'm just using the MP Media Player packaged with Ubuntu

As regards RAM/CPU this is what I have before (with just Firefox/terminal) and with DVD playing:

Before:

mbdb@M2000:~$ top

top - 13:04:36 up 15 min, 2 users, load average: 0.17, 0.30, 0.25
Tasks: 92 total, 1 running, 91 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 3.8%us, 1.1%sy, 0.0%ni, 94.6%id, 0.0%wa, 0.5%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 898880k total, 579056k used, 319824k free, 13200k buffers
Swap: 393584k total, 0k used, 393584k free, 287112k cached

With DVD:

mbdb@M2000:~$ top

top - 13:12:37 up 23 min, 2 users, load average: 0.24, 0.45, 0.35
Tasks: 94 total, 1 running, 93 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 20.1%us, 3.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 73.2%id, 3.0%wa, 0.7%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 898880k total, 891372k used, 7508k free, 367816k buffers
Swap: 393584k total, 0k used, 393584k free, 168448k cached

[jmadero]

None of that seems strange to me so I'd recommend trying another dvd player like vlc, what are you using?

[mariane_08]

Well I installed VLC. It seems a little different but I've not had the time to play with it much yet. I'm curious to know what you perceive as it advantages over something like MP which came by default with Ubuntu?

As to the slowness after using issue I dont have that right now in either player so I dont know. Maybe just a fluke?

[jmadero]

Perhaps, I was just trying to figure out if it's MP or VLC. I would say "most" people use VLC over the default player, VLC provides codecs that are "not free" (they are patented and then their format becamse main stream, such as mp3) which causes a problem for open source communities who don't want to violate patent rights and instead want to replace propriatary with open source (ogg instead of mp3). The problem is the mass market is moving much to slow so most of us will still need support for "non free" codecs. I believe these include .avi, mp4, mp3, the apple one that no one uses, etc...
VLC provides these codecs, Ubuntu has a philosophy to not package ANY software that supports these out of box, instead you have to do a bit more to get support. This is their way of trying to push the market to a more "free and open" philosophy, as states, it's going very slow....how many mp3 players do you know of that support ogg ....there are very few (unfortunately)

So I personaly don't like the MP, I think it's slow, bulky, the time scrolling is iffy, sometimes I get weird problems like having green run across the screen with avi files, etc...

Ultimately if VLC works and doesn't bog you down and MP works but bogs you down then we can pinpoint the problem and either try to solve it or bug report it. If MP is working fine now with no bogging down then I'd say that it was a one time fluke, which seems odd because computers typically don't do that.

As you get more details go ahead and post them and I can try to help you out. If it solves itself just close the thread.

[mariane_08]

Thanks for the explanation and all! I'll play with it for a few days and try and see what exactly I do/dont have going on and if I have any long term issues or not.
So much to check out LOL

[mariane_08]

Perhaps, I was just trying to figure out if it's MP or VLC. So I personaly don't like the MP, I think it's slow, bulky, the time scrolling is iffy, sometimes I get weird problems like having green run across the screen with avi files, etc...

Ultimately if VLC works and doesn't bog you down and MP works but bogs you down then we can pinpoint the problem and either try to solve it or bug report it. If MP is working fine now with no bogging down then I'd say that it was a one time fluke, which seems odd because computers typically don't do that.

As you get more details go ahead and post them and I can try to help you out. If it solves itself just close the thread.

Well I've played with both MP and VLC for a week now. I cant say there's any consistant slowing down after MP use (but not 100% convinced there isn't either) so will consider that issue closed for now.

However, a couple of other issues come up though which are very predictable and consistantahve though. I think they are all related.

1. I was playing a DVD in Media Player. The movie was 2 hours long. If I just let it play it plays just fine. BUT.. if I fast forward or skip ahead it freezes up at exactly
1hr 8 mins. Every time at exactly 1:08. nothing will function until I eject the DVD. If I then look at memory usage I find that at this point most of my swap has been used up.

2. I have downloaded some PDF files. They are of maps so they are quite large files. Then when I go to open and view them and start to scroll around afer a few seconds I freeze up completely. Only option is to then reboot.

This all seems to be related. Any thoughts?
Thanks

[jmadero]

Those sound unrelated to me, two different memory leaks.

With the hour and 8 minute DVD is that with both of the players (VLC and MP)?

With pdf's....I've seen memory leaks in evince before, that was in the past and I thought they'd fix them....

Are you willing to upgrade to a non LTS release? You are running a version that is a year old, Jaunty was just released last week and I've been running it for about a month, for the most part I am happy with it...you may want to try Intrepid first though as I have found one bug in Jaunty that is just driving me insane

[mariane_08]

Those sound unrelated to me, two different memory leaks.

With the hour and 8 minute DVD is that with both of the players (VLC and MP)?

With pdf's....I've seen memory leaks in evince before, that was in the past and I thought they'd fix them....

Are you willing to upgrade to a non LTS release? You are running a version that is a year old, Jaunty was just released last week and I've been running it for about a month, for the most part I am happy with it...you may want to try Intrepid first though as I have found one bug in Jaunty that is just driving me insane

The 1hr 8 min freeze is only happening in MP. VLC is just fine. I can just forget about MP but would like to have the option of using it and know whats causing the freeze.

I dont seem to have any other PDF problems just these particular maps which are large files.

I plan on doing a fresh install of Jaunty soon. The only thing is I'm not at home right, been working in LA for the past 3 months and only have a WiFi link. When I installed Hardy it took a bit of tweaking and a wired connection to get my wifi card going (the infamous Broadcom 43XX series). So for that reason I'm reluctant to do it now in case I have the same problem (hope this is improve by now). When I get back to UK I will do it then.

Curious..whats the bug you're getting in Jaunty?