Screen tearing in 11.10 with intel graphics [closed]

This is a bug with Intel Sandy Bridge graphics.

• Launchpad bug report
• Upstream bug report

Unity

A workaround for Unity (or Unity 2D with Compiz) is to enable the options Force full screen redraws (buffer swap) on repaint and maybe also Don't wait for video sync in the Workarounds section of CompizConfig Settings Manager:

GNOME Shell

In GNOME Shell, you can work around the bug by setting the CLUTTER_PAINT environment variable in /etc/environment:

CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws:disable-culling
CLUTTER_VBLANK=True

I've got an older Intel chipset (G965) but the same problem. The only way I got it working 100% "right" is by using Video Overlay. The disadvantage of that is that it doesn't work correctly with 3D effects and compositing. I don't know if Video Overlay is still supported on Sandy Bridge. If it is, this is how to use it.

Use xvinfo to get a detailed description of all XVideo Adaptors. In my case there are two, "Intel(R) Textured Video" and "Intel(R) Video Overlay". The second one works for me and the output of xvinfo looks like this:

  Adaptor #1: "Intel(R) Video Overlay"
    number of ports: 1
    port base: 93
    operations supported: PutImage 

What you're looking for is the port number, in this case 93.

In order to use this in mplayer, either start it with mplayer -vo xv:port=93 or put something like this in your $HOME/.mplayer/config:

[default]
vo=xv:port=93

Setting xv:adaptor=1 might also work.

For xine there's a config setting video.device.xv_port that can be set in $HOME/.xine/config.

GStreamer has a property device for xvimagesink but I don't know how to set it. (I'm using only mplayer).