i have ubuntu 8.10 with the Radeon hd 4800 series. when i play a movie through the movie player there is lots of black flashes across the display. ARe there some packages i need to download

You have libdvdcss installed by any chance?

Hello,
Is it all movies or just some? Try mplayer which plays anything.
Also you should have installed libdvdcss.

cheers

mPlayer for some, VLC for others. I personally like VLC. mPlayer has never worked for me, same for VLC and other people. Pick whatever, but Totem is something to stay away from in general.

i had that package and i tried both the all 3 players and there is still a black flash

Strange. Is it the same for any DVD? Have you ever had problems with this drive before?

i fixed it! /etc/x11/xorg.conf add command line Option "TexturedVideo" "on"

only works in fullscreen mode tho

I recommend run mplayer from the command line. Its GUI is horrible.

In mplayer, you can try play back video using OpenGL. The following command is an example syntax and I have tested it with ATI Radeon 64 VIVO (7200 series) using the radeon X11 driver.

mplayer -vo gl -dr -vf scale=-1:-1 file

If that does not fix the problem, you could turn off page flipping which might cause some interlace content to flicker. If that does not work, turn on vsync for both video overlays and 3D overlays.

Sometimes video playback flickers with nVidia graphics. This problem is hard for me to replicate.

I think the problem lies on Xorg. Probably Xinerama might be screwing things up.

how do i turn on vsync go video overlay and 3d overlay i could not find it under ati catalyst control center and under the mplayer prefs.
i get good video quality in the full screen mode but sometime the it freezes for a split second and continues.