Thanks Ricardo, I think the screensaver issue is indeed resolved
same, I tried celluloid but its not as good. for me smplayer mostly works using --gpu-context=x11 but i think this basically means it avoids using wayland.. also the screen goes to sleep, so smplayer needs a change to inhibit sleep on wayland
For me, this works.. I tried a few video files and no choppy playback so far. Will test a bit further when I have time
Wayland suport