About setting brightness

I've done quite a lot of research around the page but couldn't find anything to fix my lil problem. I didn't have any of these the other day, but somehow, after installing some new codec and the newest divx codec, my world crumbled. Well, I uninstalled the troublesome codec but got more problems now.

So, if I don't use overlay at all, my video gets behind audio. If I use overlay mode 1, the video makes short stops once in few seconds as the audio goes on. Okay, managed to play it like I used to with overlay mode 2. But my screen is too dark, even with screen's own settings at brightest. I try to modify brightness settings through preferences -> divx, like I used to, but it doesn't do anything, just returns back to zero once I return to video. Well, next I tried using the HW color controls and managed to get a nice brightness, but now that I have modified those, my video starts slowing down again. If I set HW color setting brightness back to default, video goes back to normal. It seems to want me to decide between dark or out of synch video. Would be nice to get my player back to normal, since I like it. ;o;

I'm using the newest avaible version, 0.86 Build 501 and have the newest divx codec.