Colors different under mplayer and Gnome Mplayer

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Sat, 2009-05-02 at 18:07 +0200, Roberto Ragusa wrote:
> Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
> > I've been using mplayer to view videos till today, when I decided to try
> > out totem and gnome-mplayer.  Both totem and gnome-mplayer play videos
> > smoothly and with good sound, but the colors are different from the ones
> > I get with mplayer.  Totem and gnome-mplayer both display the same, but
> > I think the colors in mplayer are correct.  Skin tones in totem look
> > bluish.  Totem and gnome-mplayer seem to be displaying red where mplayer
> > displays blue and vice versa.
> > 
> > Are there any sample videos that I can use to find out what's going on?
> > The videos I've been looking at are in AVI and Windows Media formats.
> > The system is x86_64 running F10 with an Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT with the
> > proprietary Nvidia driver.  The colors displayed by all other
> > applications look quite reasonable.
> > 
> > Any help would be very welcome.
> 
> If red and blue appear to be exchanged, you can try to correct
> the error by using the "hue" control of the players.
> 
> Either you have accidentally changed the hue in your players
> and the settings have been saved, or (quite probably) there is
> a bug in the players or graphical drivers.
> 
> Also try to see if there is any difference between mplayer
> with -vo x11 and with -vo xv.
> 
> Testing vlc would be another data point.

As you suggest running mplayer with -vo x11 displays normal colors, and
-vo xv displays "reversed" colors.  Is it possible to control the video
output method for totem and/or gnome-mplayer?  If so, how?  

I suspect there *is* a bug in the driver, since I've never seen this
problem before.  Maybe it's time to switch back to the free drivers.
I'd like to report the bug, and (as I wrote before) a test file would be
extremely useful for this.

Vlc is available from the rpmfusion repo.  What are its special good
qualities as compared with mplayer and/or totem?

Thanks - jon