The VideoLAN Forums

Hi to everyone!

I'm a debian sid user and yesterday I've changed my server audio into pulse audio (in gnome 2.26). Everything is ok, but vlc 1.0.0-rc2 doesn't work with pulse plugin directly (no sound at all)
With alsa one the sound comes out, but with some noises.

The debug output (with pulseaudio output enabled):


What's happened?

Tell me if you want other info.

Thanks.

I've upgraded to this git version > http://repo.or.cz/w/vlc.git?a=commit;h= ... f41805793c and now sound comes out, but initially it has strange noises, then after 5-6 seconds it becomes normal.

vlc -vvv of that:

I have the same problem but without a solution.
I upgraded vlc from 0.9.9a to 1.0.0-rc2 and the sound over PulseAudio is gone. With 0.9.9a it worked.
I also tried vlc-beta-1.1.0-2009060501.1 but with no success.

Addendum:
vlc 1.0.0-rc2 connects to server, it is shown as a client in the volume control application of PulseAudio, but there is no sound, the volume meter don't show any amplitude as it did with vlc 0.9.9a.

i'm glad to know that I'm not the only one:

Now with 1.0.0-rc3 still no sound at all.

vlc -vvv
And if I downgrade to git version of my last post... pulseaudio is broken also there.

Hope someone help us...

For each try, please:
1- remove the cache plugins:
$ rm ~/.vlc/cache/*
2- Explicitely select the vlc pulseaudio output, then close vlc
3- kill the pulseaudio server and restart it will verbose log:
$ pulseaudio -k ; pulseaudio -vvvv
4- then run vlc with vlc -vvvv

Explantations:
vlc use the alsa output by default. This output allows vlc to hear sound from the PA server (using the alsa-plugin-pulseaudio is a little better), but the sound still crackles.
Instead, vlc have it owns native PA audio output. That's this output that currently doesn't work because of a "yet to be discovered" regression.

My POV is that reverting git commit b8f23ea716693d8d07dd8bd0cb4c9ba8ed05f568 fix the behaviour, but that doesn't explain what the problem is...

Thanks kwizart!

pulseaudio -vvvv
and vlc -vvvv (from git a2e763951e8aa0e90ddadc034ab12dcad946f36a)
Still no sound...
This evening I try to build git b8f23ea716693d8d07dd8bd0cb4c9ba8ed05f568 and I will report here my impressions.

Does it works once you have reverted with :
git revert b8f23ea716693d8d07dd8bd0cb4c9ba8ed05f568

Next time I will revert, right.

but now I've build git b8f23ea716693d8d07dd8bd0cb4c9ba8ed05f568 (tar.gz from repo.or.cz) and still no sound:

pulseaudio -vvvv
vlc -vvvv What's wrong?

This is my patch that seems to be causing issues.
The patch forces pulse to use a lower latency mode and reduces clicking significantly during playback with multiple channel streams, it also adjusts the buffer sizes to be more in-line with the newer pulseaudio server.

On what I have tested it works perfectly, this is Ubuntu of the last few revisions and with vanilla pulseaudio 0.9.13 - 0.9.15.
There is an issue that has cropped up in addition to debian where it is not working on fedora, which I am currently trying to install although the installer keeps crashing (great distribution so far).

The crash will be in pulseaudio so debug outputs from that would be more useful than VLC output as vlc wont complain much about the pulse plugin as it doesnt have to do much to output the stream.
So get pulse audio debugs, first kill pulseaudio with 'pulseaudio -k' then restart in verbose mode with 'pulseaudio -vvv' the verbose mode will throw out loads of stuff but the info I am interested in is when vlc connects so start vlc after running pusleaudio and post the connection info.

I am looking into this now and with a bit of luck I will soon have fedora installed to test (and try to break).
Could you please tell me versions of pulseaudio (pulseaudio --version) and linux distribution?
This will help me find where the issue is.

Also the clicking at the start of the tracks happens in all of the vlc-pulse plugins versions I have used and has something to do with a race condition between vlc filling the buffer and pulse reading from it. It usually settles after 3-4 seconds and in my patched version is reduced.

I hope I can help with this:
And here is the output of pulseaudio -vvv (without the output before vlc started): And that is the output of pulseaudio playing the same file as before but with kaffeine (sound is working here): On a first look I see that the type of connection is different.
Vlc connects via UDP and kaffeine aka xine connects via TCP.
The next difference is that vlc uses 32 bit float numbers and kaffeine 16 bit signed integer for the sound data.

After I finally managed to get fedora installed and sound coming out I have worked out the source of the problem and have submitted the following patch upstream.
Basically the prebuf size needs halving.

Could you test this for me please?

I have it working on my fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha now.

kind regards,
Danny

Finally sound comes out

I've tried rc1 with your patch and vlc uses pulseaudio direcly without problems, so I've buildt rc3 git f84c91c6581c2f0eeaeb7df78c69518ef2eeca0a of today (that has your patch included) and sound comes out clear and nice.

Just for debug
pulseaudio -vvv (with pulseaudio-dbg package installed and vlc started): vlc- vvvv Pulseaudio's packages version is 0.9.15-3 on debian sid i386

Many thanks for your work danwood.

Thanks for the report.

Absolutely no problem!
Pulseaudio is great when it works

Thanks for the report.

No problem.

Thank you too for your work.