Green screen dilemma

October 28, 2005 4:05 AM

When I play movie files in Firefox --qt, Windows Media, whatever--it will often play for a minute or so just fine, and then suddenly the screen goes green, thought the audio will still continue to play. I have to reboot to solve it but it always crops up again eventually. Anyone know why this is and what I can do about it?
posted by zardoz to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Generally, this is video card related. A way around it would be:

- Make sure you are running the latest drivers for your video card.
- Make sure you are not running in 256 color mode

If that doesnt work, try: (these are for WMP...I dont know about quicktime, etc)

- Turn down video accelleration. In WMP9 or later you do this by going to Tools|Options|Performance and moving the slider.

- Change advanced video settings...as above, but instead of moving the slider around, hit the advanced button, turn off "use overlays"

If that doesnt work

- turn off "use high quality mode" in the same place.

The first two suggestions will probably get you the most bang for your buck, since the problem is systemic rather than app specific. I threw the Windows media stuff in there because I happened to see this particular issue not long ago, and that is how we went about troubleshooting it.
posted by stupidcomputernickname at 5:08 AM on October 28, 2005

I would not advise ever playing video in a browser, but using the standalone player. Browsers tend to have annoying settings that can't be changed.
posted by vanoakenfold at 6:07 AM on October 28, 2005

It's not really a solution to the problem, but I found that the FireFox extension MediaPlayerConnectivity is a far better way to stream files then in the browser window. It will allow you to pipe them to an external player (you can set which one) and then you're no longer restricted to the size on the page. You can fullscreen it, move it around etc.
posted by purephase at 6:33 AM on October 28, 2005

I use MediaPlayerConnectivity, and I have the same problem sometimes, but only with WMP (say, when watching clips on the Comedy Central website).

I thought it was a glitch on the server side that I couldn't do much about, so thanks for bringing that up, zardoz, and for the tips, nickname.
posted by mumble at 8:28 AM on October 28, 2005

Just a guess, but if you have graphics set to 32-bit colour, try switching to 16-bit..
posted by ascullion at 8:35 AM on October 28, 2005

If none of the above works, you can try getting a new version of the codecs, e.g. here
posted by Sharcho at 8:39 AM on October 28, 2005

I had this problem before and it was because of codecs, FWIW.
posted by Heminator at 9:08 AM on October 28, 2005