Why does VLC superimpose an additional “shadow” image? !enter image description here This "effect" has been regularly occuring on my Fedora 20 desktop the past few days. It seems strictly confined to VLC and does not affect any other video players I have installed. I have played with VLC settings (including resetting to the factory default settings) as well as reinstalling the entire package with no luck. The only thing that seems to fix this is a complete reboot of my system. Why does this occur and how can I fix this besides a reboot?

This is a issue with vlc's output module, you need to choose one that works with your X server/desktop environment. Open vlc's preferences, ad change your output module:

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The specific one you need to use will depend on your system, try `X11 video output` and, if that doesn't work, try the others until you find one that does.