Nikos Chantziaras posted on Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:57:18 +0300 as excerpted:
> When using VLC with a skin, KWin doesn't drop a shadow under the window.
> VLC bypasses the window manager it seems, so even though it's actually
> a (frameless) window, it's not handled as such. Is there a way around
> that?
I had hoped someone who uses VLC would reply, but I see no replies so far,
so perhaps this more general reply based on experience with other media
clients and with kwin will help.
Can you setup a window-specific config for it?
Either from kcontrol (mis-labeled system-settings, but it's NOT system
settings, in general, it's kde specific user settings, system settings
would affect other users, and be effective running under gnome, xfce, at
the text console, etc, not just kde, and not just the single user, as
settings here generally do), or as I usually do, from the window menu of
any convenient window with one, choose configure window behavior, then at
the bottom left of the resulting dialog, choose window specific. On the
left, choose new, which pops open a sub-dialog. Click detect window
properties, which changes the pointer to cross-hairs, and click on the VLC
window.
That should get you a third popup with information about the VLC window
you clicked on. Assuming the information looks sane, you can select which
parts of it kwin should use to recognize the window, and hit OK.
That should populate the first two tabs, window, and window extra, back on
the second dialog. You can make further changes to them (perhaps changing
exact match to substring match for the window title, if you're matching
it, for instance, and setting an appropriate description, possibly simply
"VLC"), then move on, to the actual settings kwin can control on the last
three tabs.
There doesn't seem to be a direct option controlling shadows, but given
that you said about the VLC window, tt'd be interesting to see what
checking "no border" (preferences tab), force, but leaving the right
checkbox UNCHECKED, would do. No-border, forced, but unchecked on the
right, should force a border to be displayed.
Also, on the workarounds tab, try playing with the window type, and the
ignore and strictly obey geometry options. Geometry doesn't sound like
what you're trying to do, exactly, but it's possible that setting those
options appropriately will allow kwin to control the window and thus for
the shadow to apply as well. And I've never quite figured out what the
window type options are supposed to do, or if they even work, which is why
I say play with them a bit, and see if you can get it to work as desired.
(FWIW, I did experiment with window shadows back when the composite based
effects first came out, in the kde3 era, and again on kde4 after I got my
new, better, graphics card, but the shadow effect was simply not to my
liking, so I don't use it. Thus another reason I'm saying play with these
options, as I don't know that they'll work, but I know enough about how
the others work that they can definitely be eliminated as controlling
factors.)
FWIW, on the one app I was trying to get to do what I wanted (in that
case, obey the minimum size, also on the workarounds tab, it was ignoring
it at first, so it /was/ geometry), I had to set both ignore requested
geometry (forced, checked) and strictly obey geometry (forced, unchecked),
in ordered to get it to do what I wanted. Setting just one would continue
to work on the window I was experimenting with once I'd got it working,
but wouldn't work on a new window. For that, I had to set both, in
ordered to get it working again.
Meanwhile, what sort of video playback display are you using, and on what
hardware?
On older hardware, overlay was the most efficient, and often the only way
to get video to play without glitches and with as few frame-skips as
possible. However, it works by effectively rendering the video to a
different part of graphics memory, then mapping that into the display
framebuffer at the appropriate place as it draws the display. Thus, the
actual video area wasn't part of what the window manager touched at all,
it completely bypassed the normal window system, and effects such as
shadow and translucency normally won't work at all in an overlay.
However, in windowed (that is, not full-screen) playback, most players
have a normal window around the actual video playback area, and the normal
window manager has normal control over it, including shadow and
translucency effects. But if VLC actually uses overlay for the entire
app...
On newer hardware, OpenGL playback is an option similar to overlay, but
implemented using OpenGL instead. In fact, some drivers (including the
freedomware Radeon driver I use on my main machine) use OpenGL textures to
emulate the old overlay feature as well on newer hardware, which often has
only very basic unaccelerated actual 2D (if it's not entirely emulated on
the 3D hardware) and may not support hardware overlay at all, so the OpenGL
texture overlay implementation is fastest and may in fact be the only way
of implementing it. On these devices, therefore, overlay actually ends up
being OpenGL, anyway.
But OpenGL playback mode is at least in theory a bit more flexible than
hardware overlay mode. As I understand it (tho here my understanding is
at its limit and may be incorrect), while overlay completely hardware
bypassed the normal window management system, etc, OpenGL mode at least in
theory allows the two systems to work together, so effects such as
shadows, etc, should be possible. HOWEVER, actual implementation tends to
fall behind the theory, and it may not be possible simply because the
window manager and/or graphics driver hasn't implemented the appropriate
functionality. There's also likely to be additional bugs in that area, so
even where implemented, there may be additional artifacting, and/or
instability that make it undesirable to actually use in practice. As for
options controlling such, other than simply choosing OpenGL playback mode
or not, I haven't a clue, and all I could suggest would be to play around
with it if you've got options that look related, and see what happens.
BTW, there's actually several variants of OpenGL playback mode,
implementing various optimizations possible on various hardware. Again,
this is something to experiment with, if the options are exposed to you to
do so.
The third video playback mode is "surface". This renders the video
directly to the normal framebuffer, where it can be controlled by the
normal window manager, effects and all. On old and slow hardware, this
tended to be too slow to be workable, tho occasionally it was the only
option, and video playback was simply crappy on that hardware. On newer
hardware, it's generally workable, but it's more CPU intensive than the
other modes. Of course, "more CPU intensive" is relative, and on good
hardware, it may be only a few percent, thus unnoticeable under normal
circumstances.
So if VLC has the option, surface mode playback is very likely to let kwin
do its thing with translucency and shadows, etc, but depending on your
hardware, CPU usage and/or quality of playback may be unacceptable. The
other two alternatives, some variant of OpenGL, or overlay (which in turn
may be implemented as an OpenGL variant by your graphics driver), should
use less CPU, but you'll likely lose some kwin control and effects as a
tradeoff. Which of the two, OpenGL or overlay, is more efficient, depends
on your hardware.
Finally, what other players have you tried? Just putting a word in for
smplayer, with its many features found lacking in kde's default
dragonplayer, or the built-in player kparts in dolphin/gwenview/konqueror.
As I said I've never tried VLC, tho I've been thinking of trying it, so
can't say how it compares, but smplayer has features like single-frame-
advance that other players lack, which I really enjoy, so that's why I use
it. The caveat is that due to the general patented codec situation, many
binary distributions either don't ship the mplayer backend, or ship it in
crippled form. However, the full version is generally available from
unofficial repositories, and user-compiled-source distributions like
Gentoo, which I use, don't have the problem in the first place, so getting
an un-crippled mplayer isn't generally a big issue.
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
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