Fix blue tinted video in Ubuntu

by Ryan
on March 12, 2009

A strange issue has been identified in Ubuntu where video takes on a blue colored tint. Other descriptions of the problem include inverted colors, blue skin tones, or distorted video hues. The problems have been reproduced with Totem (Gstreamer), Totem (Xine), Mplayer, as well as VLC and other players.

The common theme with this bug seems to be the use of the Nvidia closed source drivers.

Here is an example showing the blue tint problem.

blue_tint_totem

Here are the specific steps to fix the issue for the Totem (Gstreamer) player. There may be similar methods for other players.

The first thing you need to do is make a change to gstreamer-properties.

Open gstreamer-properties from within a terminal.

$ gstreamer-properties

Now click on the Video tab. From the Plugin dropdown box select Custom. Finally add the following line to the Pipeline box.

videobalance hue=-1 ! autovideosink

The window should look like this.

gstreamer_properties

Restart Totem for these changes to take effect.




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11 Comments

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Comments

Comments (10)

by mantvydas
on March 24, 2009 9:53 am

does anybody know the specific steps for other players?

thanks

by Kokx
on April 23, 2009 12:07 pm

Well mantvydas, that is pretty simple. Most of the gstreamer settings are general, so with changing this settings will also have effect on VLC.

by mantvydas
on May 31, 2009 6:56 am

unfortunately, doesn’t work on VLC… any other suggestions?

by Andrew
on November 4, 2009 8:36 am

Thanks, works great for Totem. Hopefully there will be enough of us linux users soon that companies will have to stop making second rate products for us.

by jkogut
on November 14, 2009 6:29 am

Hello,

thnx for tips.
It works for totem player perfectly.
In case of MPlayer you need to play around with
mplayer’s video preferences (I’ve switched driver xv —> gl) and everything looks great.

Cheers,
Jan

by mikel
on November 19, 2009 12:07 am

Great hint. Thank you and the google.

by Eduardo Sanchez
on December 10, 2009 2:50 pm

worked great! thank you very much :) !

by weston
on January 4, 2010 3:49 pm

Thanks a bunch. Very helpful.

by Atli Þór
on January 12, 2010 3:38 pm

Thanks. Worked great.

Worth mentioning that if you -like me - automatically sudo’ed the gstreamer-properties command, this will not work. I guess that sets the properties for the root user, not your current user.

… Now if I can only get rid of the video-tearing, I can free up my Windows partition for good :)

by Nick J
on February 2, 2010 11:10 pm

See workaround in this bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/totem/+bug/395476 , assuming you’re using the closed-source nvidia drivers:
# open totem via Applications > Sound & Video > Movie Player
# open the preferences window via Edit > Preferences
# select the Display tab
# click the Reset to Defaults button

… that fixed the blue tint problem for me in mplayer, VLC, and totem.

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