The VideoLAN Forums

When playing a ripped Blu-ray movie file in .mkv format, the audio drops out for a second or less every 90 or so seconds. I'm using a new MacMini and running the latest version of Lion. The video is perfect - the only problem is the "clipped" audio at regular intervals.

I'm just a beginner with VLC so my problem may be very simple. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your patience.

CCB

Do you use the optical or the analog audio output?

I'm using HDMI from MacMini to TV.

CCB

Sorry, that's the only use-case I can't reproduce due to the lack of both a TV and a Mac mini.

Do you use a DTS or DolbyDigital / A52 audio track within your files? (check the information panel, in case you're unsure) Does it work okay, if you play a mp3 or a m4a file?

I was able to solve my audio drop problem by unstalling the latest version of VideoLan and reinstalling the prior version. Everything works fine using the prior version. There must be some audio bug in the current version.

CCB

I figured that. However, your response doesn't help us to isolate the issue...

Note that previous releases contain known security issues.

Hello, I just registered just to help solve this problem

So, I've been having this audio drop issue since VLC 2.0 released.
During 2.0 Nightlies everything was fine but somewhere around release of VLC 2.0 I started having this issue.
So far I tried VLC 2.0, VLC 2.0.1, VLC 2.1.0 Nightlies and had this dropout issue with each one.
It had me going so far that I reverted back to VLC 1.1.12 which fixes all problems with VLC 2.0 but I don't wanna miss out on Hi10P playback (that and dual-core support) so I'm here to help resolve this issue once and for all now =)

Here a few general informations:
- MacBook 2,26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)

The issue presents itself most annoying when watching a movie because usually my whole house starts to tremble (2x 15 inch subwoofer ) and those dropouts are REALLY noticeable for obvious reasons.

I can confirm the issue for DTS (also DTS-HD downmixed by VLC) and DD/AC3/A52.

My biggest concern lies in playback through optical out but I also noticed dropouts here and there when using my internal speakers but I werent able to make them out as precisly as when watching movies - this may be caused by the much lower volume so the dropout is only recognized when occurring while somebody is speaking (whileas using optical I mostly recognize the issue because the pressure from my subwoofers drop for a second).

While I can't confirm this issue for internal speakers I can confirm though that I had dropouts on internal speakers - though I wasn't able to make out a pattern.
I never had any audio dropouts whatsoever with VLC 1.1.12, both optical out and internal speakers work perfect with VLC 1.1.12.

Please tell me what other specific information you need, I'll try my best to provide them all so you guys can fix VLC 2.0+ for mac

@Metin Kul
How about disabling "Enable time stretching audio"? (Preferences-> All -> Audio)

Funny, I had that idea myself a few days ago but hadn't had the chance to properly test it through yet.

Though I'm pretty sure MP3/AAC on internal speakers works perfectly fine - watched a few shows and they all worked without a hitch.
But as I mentioned above I can't confirm the problem was even present on internal speakers with MP3/AAC so don't get your hopes up yet.

I'm gonna try movies when I get time and see how DTS performs on optical out but I'm not really optimistic.

Edit: MP3/AAC over optical out seems to perform flawless.

Okay so I've been testing movies (7 movies, 4 DTS, 3 DD) and shows (19 shows, 12 AAC and 7 MP3) frequently and as far as I can tell disabling time stretching audio DOESN'T solve the problem.

The problem persists no matter the source and it appears on both internal speakers as well as optical out.

AAC/MP3 -> audio drops
DTS/DD -> audio drops
internal speakers -> audio drops
optical out -> audio drops

I can't say it's every 90 seconds - it takes much longer and I wasn't able to make out a pattern. But I'm having at least about 2 to 3 dropouts per 20 minutes.
VLC 1.1.12 again works completly fine on these files - having the dropouts only with VLC 2.X

Any other ideas/suggestions apart from using VLC 1.1.12?