The VideoLAN Forums

This just began today. I am assuming that an upgrade caused it. When I open any file with vlc-beta, it opens with extreme volume and clipping. Touching the volume control instantly fixes it, but the problem remains unless the volume is touched. I have set vlc to open with volume set to zero, in an attempt to work around the problem, with no affect. The volume control displays that it is set at 100%, but the actual volume is many times higher than that. I have also uninstalled (using "cleanup deleted packages" in yast running OpenSuSE 11.4 which should remove all user settings. After re-install, the problem remains. This problem only affects vlc. Mplayer and others remain normal.

If you use PulseAudio, the default volume is set by PulseAudio. Now, there actually is a bug in VLC: the VLC volume widget shows garbage. But the point is, the starting volume is decided by PulseAudio.

Did you disable PulseAudio flat volumes?

And by the way, the PulseAudio developers insist that 100% means "maximum" instead of "nominal" volume. They make it almost impossible to determine what the nominal volume is, so it's really hard for VLC to map 100% to a sane value rather than the absolute maximum.

I don't use pulse audio. Downgrading to vlc 1.1.11 solved the problem. The problem seems to be with vlc-beta-1.2.2011072001.2-x86_64 as this began just yesterday. I have used vlc-beta for a very long time. This is a new behavior. When vlc starts, it seems to ignore all "volume" preferences and open the file with extreme volume, although the volume indicator shows otherwise. As downgrading solved the problem, I can only assume that something in the upgrade was the cause.

Ah ALSA. I think I found and fixed the problem now.

Great. vlc-beta seems to take better advantage of the alsa snd-virtuoso driver for my sound card than what the "released" version gives me. I'll watch for the latest release and give it a try.