I am running SMPlayer 0.8.0 (mplayer frontend) on Linux Mint 14 64bit, when I play a movie and stop using the peripherals the screensaver kicks in after a while.
I have checked the "Disable screensaver" option in the preferences, but it does not do that. Neither does running mplayer from the terminal. How do I fix this?
1 Answer
This is a known problem having to do with the way that gnome3 controls the screensaver. Haven't looked into it for a while now but I used to have the same thing with vlc. According to the Arch wiki, you have two options. You can either disable it for mplayer
(which should also work for smplayer
) specifically, or you could use another program disable it for various programs.
The mplayer way
First, replace gnome-screensaver
with xscreensaver
:
sudo apt-get purge gnome-screensaver
sudo apt-get install xscreensaver
Then, add the following to ~/.mplayer/config
:
heartbeat-cmd="xscreensaver-command -deactivate >&- 2>&- &"
lightsOn
LighstOn is a simple BASH script that will inhibit the screensaver when it detects any of a list of user defined programs (mplayer, and therefore smplayer, are on the list by default) running in full screen mode.
Replace gnome-screensaver
with xscreensaver
: as described above. Then, download lightsOn from here. I just tried it and it works perfectly. You might want to make it start automatically by adding it to Cinnamon's start up application list.
caffeine
Caffeine is a system tray applet for Gnome3 (it may or may not work in Cinnamon, I have not tried it). According to this site, you can give it a list of programs and it will inhibit the screensaver if they are running (full screen or not). According to the same site, it can work with both xscreensaver
and gnome-screensaver
so you may want to check it out.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:caffeine-developers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install caffeine python-glade2
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I will try that, but I have to add that VLC does not have this issue. PS. Is cinnamon DE based on gnome3? Feb 2, 2013 at 20:30
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@b-vigilanT VLC does not have it? Hmm, OK cause I just tested it on vlc and it worked :). Not surprising if the problem was not there. I will check smplayer next. Yes, cinnamon is a fork of GNOME3.– terdonFeb 2, 2013 at 20:37
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Actually, your first solution worked out fine. I watched whole of Harry Potter three, lying in my bed and subsequently falling asleep in it. :) But it's nice to know about those programs. :) Feb 3, 2013 at 19:52
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14.04 ubuntu, smplayer: lightsOn.sh did work! but caffeine did not.. May 30, 2014 at 6:06
-heartbeat-cmd "gnome-screensaver-command -d"
-- then restart the smplayer. Not sure if it works, that's why this is a comment for now :)