Ubuntu 8.04 noob question

First of all, I have pretty much no linux experience other than the few hours i've played around with the latest Ubuntu 8.04 today. So far I'm pretty impressed how far the os has come since I tried it last a couple years ago. I have however one question:

When I play a video clip in ubuntu, the picture is clear as long as I play the clip at 100% size. However when I make the video bigger or play it full screen, I get these kind of annoying horizontal and vertical bars all over the video. It's still very watchable but annoying nonetheless. When I play a clip in windows, it resizes much smoother. First I thought it had something to do with the standard ubuntu media player (i think it's totem) so I also played a few clips with VLC player but i still get these odd bars. I have installed all the codecs and everything. I've also tried deinterlacing the video and played around with other settings but nothing helped.

So to summarize, the clip looks great when I play it at regular size however the picture gets weird vertical and horizontal bars as I resize it or watch it in full screen. Sorry if I can't really explain what's going on. Could it be a driver issue? I have an x1400 and I read that there aren't really good drivers for ati card.

 

Haven't had that problem with Totem myself but maybe you should give Mplayer a try. You can get rid of the horizontal bars (there should be some) by right clicking and changing the Aspect ratio. It might also help your problem here but i know it works for sure with Mplayer.

 

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

 

Tell me how it works out for you.

 

Tried it, no change. Just to make sure you know what I mean, I included a couple of screenshots from the same scene, both were taken in vlc player, the one on the left in ubuntu, the other one in vista. You can clearly see the difference especially around the face.

 

They both have bars at the bottom, VLC is much clearer than Vista though. What's the problem? Have you tried Mplayer?

 

Yeah I tried Mplayer, same thing. I don't mind those big black bars at the top and at the bottom but the edges especially around the face look much smoother in vista even though the whole picture is clearer in ubuntu. Thanks for your help btw, +rep.

 

I think the edges may be caused by the clearer look, maybe it's the video source.

 

No it's the same video source. I actually wouldn't mind to make the video a little less clear if i could make the edges smoother. Problem is, I don't know how to do that. I thought it had something to do with deinterlacing the video but there was no change regardless of which program I used. Is it possible that it has something to do with my video card?

 

Processing is done by your processor, unless you set it to use your gfx card. Maybe you're maxing out your processor, check.

 

No the task manager shows that the first processor core is usually at around 5% and the second one at around 10-15%

 

I think you may be stretching the video bigger than it should be. What about turning on Post processing?

 

Still nothing, I think I'm just gonna get used to it, its not that bad. Thanks for your help though!