If the smplayer video window is transparent when you play a video and all you get is sound, then this can be fixed by changing the system variable XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS to 1. This could be done by declaring the variable in a shell, but this will only affect applications launched from that shell. The better and more permanent fix is to create a wrapper around the smplayer application. To do this, type the following into a terminal (as root – to become root, simply type su in the terminal and then the root password – in ubuntu, type su –):
bash -c "cat > /usr/bin/smplayer.helper" >>EOF
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
exec smplayer.real "$@"
EOF
chmod 755 /usr/bin/smplayer.helper
mv /usr/bin/smplayer{,.real}
ln -sf smplayer.helper /usr/bin/smplayer
|
This will create a wrapper around smplayer, changing the real smplayer to smplayer.real. You can now launch smplayer using the command smplayer and the video window should now work.
This fix should also work for other video applications such as Bangarang.