How to prevent screen dimming while playing with VLC?

[sling-shot]

On my notebook with AMD APU E450 running fglrx repo driver, while playing videos via VLC the screen dims after sometime. (Power settings are set to dim screen after 2 minutes when on battery).

How to prevent this dimming while a video is playing? This happens even if the video is playing fullscreen.
I prefer VLC to play all my videos.

Currently running a fully updated 2012.08 KDE installation.

[agmg]

Have you tried these two options?

1) Tools --> Preferences --> Show All --> Video --> Disable screensaver
2) Tools --> Preferences --> Show All --> Advanced --> Inhibit the power management daemon during playback

[sling-shot]

I just checked and both are already set as per your suggestion. So that is not the reason.

I am running VLC 1.1.13 The Luggage.

[agmg]

Do a check in VLC configuration file (I think it's under ~/.config/vlc/vlcrc) if those two settings are commented out.

Also try starting VLC from terminal and see if there are any errors. I have read that this version of VLC has problems with xdg-utils (VLC uses xdg-screensaver to control the screensaver). Do you have screensaver enabled?

[ternor]

There is a tool called Caffeine which you can use to disable / enable power saving.

[sling-shot]

agmg :

Code: [Select]

# Disable screensaver (boolean)
#disable-screensaver=1


Code: [Select]

# Inhibit the power management daemon during playback (boolean)
#inhibit=1


Screensaver was set to start automaticallly after 15 minutes but no screensaver was selected. There are only 2, blank and random. I have never used any screensavers till today. These were default settings.
I have currently unticked the "Start screensaver after 15 minutes" box.

-------------------

UPDATE:
There is no change. The screen still dims after 1 minute.

[agmg]

agmg :

Code: [Select]

# Disable screensaver (boolean)
#disable-screensaver=1


Code: [Select]

# Inhibit the power management daemon during playback (boolean)
#inhibit=1


Screensaver was set to start automaticallly after 15 minutes but no screensaver was selected. There are only 2, blank and random. I have never used any screensavers till today. These were default settings.
I have currently unticked the "Start screensaver after 15 minutes" box.

Just as I suspected. The lines are commented out.
Remove the # mark in front of #disable-screensaver=1 & #inhibit=1, save the file and try again.

[Just17]

agmg :

Code: [Select]

# Disable screensaver (boolean)
#disable-screensaver=1


Code: [Select]

# Inhibit the power management daemon during playback (boolean)
#inhibit=1


Screensaver was set to start automaticallly after 15 minutes but no screensaver was selected. There are only 2, blank and random. I have never used any screensavers till today. These were default settings.
I have currently unticked the "Start screensaver after 15 minutes" box.

Just as I suspected. The lines are commented out.
Remove the # mark in front of #disable-screensaver=1 & #inhibit=1, save the file and try again.

Strange ......  I see the same behaviour here .....  those entries are commented out despite the boxes being ticked in the settings   

[sling-shot]

Nope. Uncommenting those lines still does not seem to have helped.

[agmg]

Have you tried starting VLC from console and see if there is a message when the screen dims?

[sling-shot]

That test is still pending. Also while shutting down, I came to know that I had not yet clicked Apply after deselecting screensaver.

So I will report back only tomorrow when I will login to my regular install again during my workday.

[sling-shot]

Sorry for the delayed reply.

Here is the commandline output for vlc :

Code: [Select]

VLC media player 1.1.13 The Luggage (revision exported)
Blocked: call to unsetenv("DBUS_ACTIVATION_ADDRESS")
Blocked: call to unsetenv("DBUS_ACTIVATION_BUS_TYPE")
[0x871c914] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "")
Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "")
Blocked: call to putenv("LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8:en_US:en")
kfilemodule(13184) KSambaSharePrivate::testparmParamValue: We got some errors while running testparm "Load smb config files from /etc/samba/smb.conf
Loaded services file OK.
Warning: Service printers defines a print command, but rameter is ignored when using CUPS libraries.
"
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1018:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
[0x87e4e7c] pulse audio output error: cannot connect to server: Connection refused
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server socket
jack server is not running or cannot be started
[0x87e4e7c] jack audio output error: failed to connect to JACK server
[0x87e4e7c] oss audio output error: cannot open audio device (/dev/dsp)
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1018:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
Segmentation fault

There does not seem to be anything related to screen dimming as such. There is a problem with audio however.

[parnote]

sling-shot ...

Just curious, but have you checked the BIOS settings of the laptop? I've seen quite a few laptops that have BIOS settings to automatically dim the screen after a predefined amount of time.

[sling-shot]

[parnote]
I had gone through BIOS earlier while trying to fix a Suspend/Hibernate problem (which later turned out to be the fault of AMD driver). I do not see any setting there about monitor dimming.

Believe it might be due to KDE Power management not being informed properly that VLC is a video player (or is running full screen).

Out of things to try at the moment.

Will be updating my test partition to VLC 2.0.x. Report back how that goes.

[pags]

Does this help at all:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,108235.msg925289.html#msg925289
?