Alright, so I tried to set up this cool live wallpaper thing on my KDE Plasma desktop, you know, the one called “Smart Video Wallpaper.” I’ve always wanted to have a video playing as my background, looked pretty slick in the previews.
I went ahead and downloaded it, seemed pretty straightforward. Installation was a breeze, no hiccups there. But then, when I actually tried to apply a video as my wallpaper, nothing! Just a black screen staring back at me. Super frustrating, right?
So I thought, “Okay, maybe it’s just this one video.” I tried a few different ones, different formats, sizes, the whole nine yards. Still, nothing but a black void where my awesome video wallpaper should’ve been.
I started digging around online, trying to find someone else who had this problem. Turns out, it’s not just me. A bunch of people have had the same issue with this Smart Video Wallpaper thing showing a black screen.
Apparently, the solution is to install these things called “gstreamer plugins.” Seemed a bit odd to me that a wallpaper app needed extra stuff to work, but hey, I was desperate.
I installed some related dependencies and I went back to the wallpaper settings, picked my video again, held my breath, and…bam! It’s working! My video is playing smoothly as my desktop background, just like I wanted.
- I downloaded and installed the “Smart Video Wallpaper” plugin.
- Tried to set a video as my wallpaper.
- Encountered a black screen.
- Did some research, found out about the “gstreamer plugins”.
- Installed required dependencies.
- Tried setting the wallpaper again.
- And it finally works!
Here is what I did:
It was a bit of a pain to figure out, but hey, I got my video wallpaper in the end. It is kind of annoying that it’s not mentioned anywhere that you need these extra plugins, though. Hopefully, this will help someone else out there who’s pulling their hair out over this black screen issue.
