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sashoalm
Asked: 2012-02-09 02:25:10 +0800 CST

Screen turns off while VLC is playing movies in Kubuntu

  • 772

When I play a movie on VLC the screen turns off after 10 minutes. I used to run Ubuntu and this didn't happen there.

kubuntu vlc 11.10

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    There are couple of settings that you should check in VLC:
    1) Tools --> Preferences --> Show All --> Video --> Disable screensaver
    2) Tools --> Preferences --> Show All --> Advanced --> Inhibit the power management daemon during playback
    If both of this options are checked, you could try a simple wrapper script which disables the monitor modes that will power down, standby or blank the screen prior to calling VLC:

    #!/bin/bash

#Disable modes
/usr/bin/xset -dpms &
/usr/bin/xset s off &

#Open VLC
/usr/bin/vlc "$@"

#Re-enable modes
/usr/bin/xset dpms
/usr/bin/xset s on
exit
    • 7

  2. For me the solution was to access System Settings as root by pressing Alt+F2 to open the run dialog at the top of the screen and run

    kdesudo systemsettings

    then go to 'Display and Monitor' to get to the 'Screen Saver' selection screen and uncheck the checkbox next to 'Automatically start after:', then click 'Apply'. For some reason it seems that the screen saver setting is active on the root account in various versions of Kubuntu (probably in Ubuntu as well since I've seen posts for Ubuntu users experiencing this problem too). Doing this worked for me after first trying the suggested options of disabling Display Power Management and disabling the Screen Saver on my user account. I have not tested to see if the problem returns when those items are re-enabled but as I indicated with all of those items disabled I no longer have a problem with the screen going blank while watching videos with VLC.

    • 2

  3. Have you tried to disable the "Screen Energy Saving" from the Power Management ?

    System Settings > (Hardware) Power Management > Power Profiles

    enter image description here

    A bit older: http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?51579-SOLVED-video-standby-every-10-minutes-when-mouse-is-not-used-(watching-a-video)

    • 0

  4. There is a separate setting in system/settings/display-monitor that is independent from power management settings. Just go there and disable screen saver. This will take care of your problem.

    • 0

  5. It may also help starts vlc with the "--inhibit" option. You can put that option in the VLC startup line editing the KickOff launcher menu: /usr/bin/vlc --inhibit %U that works on Debian Wheezy 7.8.0 vlc version 2.0.6 Twoflower (2.0.6-0-gbe9623c)

    • 0

  6. You could install tool like Caffeine:

    Caffeine

    Caffeine is a system applet that allows the user to temporarily inhibit both the screensaver and the sleep power saving mode, simply by clicking on it.

    This could be useful for example when watching long flash videos or playing certain full screen games that don't inhibit the screensaver by themselves. Caffeine can be set to automatically activate when any user specified application is running.

    More info at: http://ubuntu-tweak.com/app/caffeine/

    Installation steps:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:caffeine-developers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install caffeine
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