How to stop screensaver starting when video apps run?

["Craig Hagerman" <craighagerman@gmail.com>]

Briefly I am wondering how I can set up the (gnome) screensaver to NOT
come on when I am running a video app.

Up until a few months ago I had my debian machine set up so that the
screen would go blank after 5 minutes and then shut off the monitor
after 10 minutes. But the screen would remain on whenever I played a
video in totem, VLC, mplayer, etc. Then (a few months back) after an
apt-get dist-upgrade it stopped behaving this way. At the time I
thought that it was just one of those apt-get hiccups where some
behaviour changes until something else gets upgraded. Now I figure
that some config file was over-written such that media apps no longer
take precidence over the screen saver app. Can anyone tell me how I
can get that behaviour back?

Thanks in advance,

Craig