All the video I have ever tried to view online, such as at YouTube or on Yahoo will play fine in the browser (Firefox). But when I play a downloaded file, it's a different story. I get flickering video when I try to play back .flv in Totem. I also experience the flickering in Skype and Ekiga. Sometimes it's really bad and you can barely tell what you're looking at, other times it's not so bad, but very annoying on the eyes. I have had this issue for all the time I've had LM10 installed, but have been looking for the answer and trying different things (below), but to no avail. I've been using the default Totem to play the videos.

Linuxmint 10/Gnome amd64
All updates/patches applied
Totem 2.32.0
Skype for Linux 2.2.0.35
Hardware: Medion laptop w/Nvidia GeForce Go 6150
Code:

inxi reports:
Graphics: Card nVidia C51 [Geforce Go 6150] X.Org 1.9.0 Res: 1280x800@60.0hz
GLX Renderer Software Rasterizer GLX Version 2.1 Mesa 7.9-devel


What I have tried:
dragonplayer the KDE player also flickers the same way.
gnome-mplayer 0.9.9.2 same flickering
gxine -segmentation fault, can't even tell which version it is.
kaffine 1.1 - won't play the file even though it says it is playing.
VLC 1.1.7 - same flickering
I disable compiz via the command
Code:

sudo /usr/bin/compiz --replace

Then re-enabling Gnome w/the command
Code:

sudo /usr/bin/metacity --replace

Without compiz, I see no window title bar, therefore there are no icon controls to close, minimize/maximize/restore the windows. Also, I lose something else, but don't remember what that was. All I know is I can't operate without compiz enabled. So I have been issuing the command to disable, then re-enable, then reboot. That **usually** works, and I'm able to view whatever video I have on my drive. But lately, it seems more often than not, I can't get the video to play w/o flickering.

Also, I went into Control Center/Compiz Config Settings Mgr/Gen Options and the Display settings tab. I forget what it was set at iniatially, but it seems like it was 50-something. Anyway, I've tried 100, and 60 (the correct video refresh rate - 60), and that didn't change anything. And on the same screen, ticked on "Sync to VBlank".

Well, I found out something by accident. I right clicked on some of my video files, selected properties, and noticed that they have differing frames per second. This seems to be the problem. If I want to view files that are 30 fps, then I disable Gnome, re-enable it, reboot, and then I can view the 30 fps videos w/no problem. But if I try to view a video w/another fps than 30, it flickers. Also, after that failed attempt, it causes me to not be able to view any fps, and I have to go through the disable/enable Gnome, reboot to view another video. What gives? What is this called? Any ideas on how to fix? Thanks.

I recommend installing the proprietary nvidia drivers and seeing if they help.

I had thought about this, but have some reservations about it because I had installed Nvidia drivers in my WinXP (when I had it on this computer) and it crashed the system hard. Had to throw away that installation. So I'm a bit gun shy about this. Thanks. I'll back everything up and give it a try though.