whenever i start to play a video in vlc (all formats) the monitor goes black for about half a second then returns back to the video, this is annoying since i never get to see the first part of the video (most often the very first part is important)

is this my hardware, did i install a proprietary hard ware driver that may be causing this because heres the only proprietary driver install on this machine

ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver
do i need to uninstall it because i know that the monitor is fine, it has worked well in previous versions of ubuntu so why is it doing this now

this has been happening since the upgrade to lucid lynx but its now starting to get annoying and i have tolerated to way too long now i'm tired of it

Have you tried a different output driver for vlc? I've had the same flickering with the proprietary AMD drivers, but only when using Xv, iirc. The OpenGL output device in vlc did not have that problem.

Adam

how do i set it up like that

I think the setting is in a pretty logical place. Did you check for it before you asked?

Go to Tools --> Preferences --> Video. Change the output to something else.

Adam

alright i tried them all and they all don't work (one did but it opens a new window for the video if thats the closest that it get then fine but i want it to not open any new windows)