The VideoLAN Forums

When the About dialogue is the active front dialogue, my Mac emits an irritating high-pitched squeal. I can't tell if it's the speakers or where it's coming from. The squeal is there whether the dialogue is on my 1.66 MHz PowerBook G4's primary screen or on a CRT monitor I use as a secondary.

However if the About dialogue is simply visible but it is not the active, front dialogue, there is no squeal.

The squeal is related to the rolling credits. The volume rises and falls exactly as the speed of the credits, and if click the About box such that the credits stop rolling, the squeal stops too. When I release the mouse and the credits roll again, the squeal comes back.

I mentioned the same thing 9 months ago and no one ever responded.

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=50611

It continues through 1.0RC3

VLC doesn't do anything special there. This sounds like a bug in the driver of your audio card that is triggered in some very specific cases. You should inform Apple I think.

I seriously doubt it's a driver issue since it occurs no where else but in the VLC About window. Also, It's really quiet and high-frequency so some may not hear it or some speakers may not reproduce it, but it's definitely there only when the text is scrolling. Under RC3 I'm not even seeing the first 3 or 4 seconds of the credit it scroll. It just jumps down and then starts scrolling. Are you playing a movie or something for the scroll? Maybe there's audio there or your opening an audio device but not feeding it anything.

No, it's a simple NSTextView, a timer and a scrollcommand. So nothing weird going on there.

This sounds like a bug in the driver of your audio car....

Do you happen to have a PowerBook G4 anywhere to test? Have you never heard it?

I have an iBook G4. And no i have never heard it. Nor have i every heard anyone else experience this. It reminds me of a problem you used to see on PCs many years ago. The cause was either interrupt calls, or a voltage issue. Has your computer experienced lightning strikes or other types of current fluctuations perhaps ?

I'm hearing it on a Dual 2.7 GHz G5 over external speakers, so it's not just a laptop thing.

Hmmmm, here's something interesting. For me it's not coming from the external speakers after all. It's coming from the computer itself, either inside it somewhere or the internal speaker even though the internal speaker is not active. Just playing the scroll text jumps the CPU usage from 1 to 32% and it kicks my fans on too. It's really strange, so now I'm not sure I'm hearing the same as timurray although it does appear to be caused by the same source. Maybe there's a bit of hardware that's common to both our computers since our computers date back from the same release time periond.

Is it by chance coming from your screen? Sometimes the backlight on screens make a squealing sound

No it's definitely coming from in my Tower. It sits on the floor away from the screen. I even put the display to sleep earlier with no change to the sound. It's only there when the about window is active and scrolling. I can even WindowShade it so only the titlebar shows and it still makes the sound. So it seems to be more tied to the functionality of having the window active or the processing required to scroll the window since it occurs without any visuals of the window on the screen.

I have an iBook G4. And no i have never heard it. Nor have i every heard anyone else experience this. It reminds me of a problem you used to see on PCs many years ago. The cause was either interrupt calls, or a voltage issue. Has your computer experienced lightning strikes or other types of current fluctuations perhaps ?

No power issues that I can recall. I've tried to determine where the squeal is coming from, but I can't (somewhere in this house there is a stethoscope). I can add this bit of info: If I drag the About box to my external VGA the squeal continues; when I minimize the About to the dock, it stops. (But whether the "scrolling" is continuing, in a way, while in the dock, don't know).

Earlier I said that that it appeared to be a function of scrolling: no scroll, no squeal. But I did notice that the squeal does start instantly upon viewing of About, before the scrolling starts. Once scrolling starts, stopping scroll stops squeal.

Given this happens in both a portable and a desktop, then I am guessing it may be graphics card related. What make/model is the graphics card that you are using? A few searches for "graphics card" & squealing turn up results. Some results (not Mac related):

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/sh ... d=26729168
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1034248563
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... hp?t=53380

Whether it is the exact same issue is hard to tell, but it is certainly a starting point.

I get EXACTLY the same problem on my G4.

It is not an issue with 0.9.9a as its been happening to me with every VLC for Mac OS X version since Tiger. Its very annoying. I am CERTAIN its a VLC issue.

I am using a Mac Mini G4 1.5 GHz

ATI Radeon 9200:

Chipset Model: ATY,RV280
Type: Display
Bus: AGP
VRAM (Total): 64 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x5962
Revision ID: 0x0001
ROM Revision: 113-xxxxx-134

Its not coming from the speakers on mine either... muted all sound and I still get high-pitch with the scrolling on the About box. How weird. CPU also goes 30%+ on about box scrolling too.....

I tried a selection of older VLC versions.... going all the way back to VLC 0.4.6

Ones which have scrolling... eg 0.8.4... 0.7.2.... 0.6.2 all have the high pitch sound.

Ones which dont have scrolling... 0.4.6 ... 0.5.2 dont produce the sound....

. What make/model is the graphics card that you are using?

ATI Mobility Radeon 9700

ATI Radeon 9650 here.

Something is definitely up. I'm running a brand new Macbook Pro 13" with the Geforce 9400m and I heard the same noise on the lower left of my laptop - right about where the GPU sits.

Nvidia and ATI have both had problems of late with high frequency tones coming from their chips. In fact in Nvidia's case, this problem dates back to the 8000 series. Sorry I'm at work and don't have any links about that stuff. Google will show you. Either way, it isn't something that's going to cause your chip to blow. It's just the increase in voltage going through the circuitry.

If you listen carefully, you can even hear slight noises when opening, say, a stack in grid view (albeit briefly). So I'm thinking this is the GPU, but I have no idea why it's so loud in the VLC about box.

Anyone else? Macbook owners? Note that you have to be in a completely quiet room and just a few centimetres from your computer. Older folk, like my father of 50 years, can't hear any type of high frequency pitch. Lucky bastards.

edit: an interesting arcticle I found: http://theovalich.wordpress.com/2008/11 ... squealing/

If anyone has an Apple developer account, it may be worth asking there if anyone has any ideas.

Just out of curiosity, how may hours per day do you guys tend to open our About Panel? I know it's pretty and there hundreds of names to be read, but is this actually the major feature of VLC? I could add more dialogs like this then

Just out of curiosity, how may hours per day do you guys tend to open our About Panel? I know it's pretty and there hundreds of names to be read, but is this actually the major feature of VLC? I could add more dialogs like this then

Hardy har har. I think it's more about whether there's something wrong with the members' hardware, or something screwy with the software. Let's face it, after buying a brand new laptop, then hitting "about VLC" by accident, I was faced with a screaming noise that made me go, goddamn is that annoying...hope it's not my machine. Seems to be crappy design by Nvidia and Ati (see link I posted earlier), but now I'm plain curious why it's 10x louder than playing a game etc. Oh well one for the ages.