vlc & mplayer lost window borders and controls

[icemaca]

hi,
i have a fresh 7.1 i386  with gnome2-lite and fvwm-crystal fully built 
from ports this w/e and fully up to date (including new Xorg).

when i try to run both vlc and mplayer from menus, nothing seems to 
happen. from the terminal they run when i include a filename (eg vlc 
1233.avi ormplayer 1234.avi) but i get a borderless window playing 
video, and have no controls; in both gnome and fvwm.

the packages work fine, which is ver 0.8.x something i think for vlc, 
but updating to 0.9.x in ports produced this problem and i am not sure 
if it is something in the config options or other missing depends.

i previously built vlc with ncurses option and had both  console and 
x11  versions work fine, but i can't figure out what aalib and libcaca 
are, the differnece between them or which one i may need or not.

is this issue related to these options?