vlc cuts off start and end of audio

[egglet]

Hi vlc crew,

I'm not sure if this problem applies to all audio or video files but I'm currently playing mp3s which start and end quickly for a musical so I noticed that about a second is cut off at the start and end during play back yet the files themselves are perfectly fine. Is there a way to fix this or can this be fixed in a future update?

Also just out of interest is vlc getting midi support as I realised it couldn't play them when I tried? Not to worry though but it was interesting that it didn't support it but I'm pretty sure why it currently can't play midi as it's not decoded in standard audio fashion and uses hardware specific functions or something like that.

Thanks guys for the most versatile media player out there!

[Nerd42]

yeah even the latest version still does this. why?

[Lotesdelere]

Known issue awaiting for a fix.

[coder0xff]

And still does it almost a year later. Is it really this low on the priorities?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Save your troll for another time. There has not been any major release in one year, so it's to be expected that there are no changes in this respect.

[Ratspeed]

Argh. People, that's a flame, not a troll. I swear, we're completely losing track of our terminology.

Yes, I second that this should be a higher priority if any new releases come out.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Can you please stop the wishful thinking. There are very few VLC developers, they are all doing this on their limited free time, they are many other issues, and this particular issue is quite tricky. It's not like it was left there just to piss users off. You just get what you paid for and in fact you did not pay a cent to the developers.

Audio cut off at end of stream is already fixed in VLC 1.2 preleases on supporting audio output (PulseAudio, ALSA and file), and partially fixed on other outputs. Cutoff is mostly fixed, but there is still a ~40ms cutoff of unknown cause.

[shass]

Does anyone know if there is an older version I could roll back to until this problem is fixed?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

This bug has been there as long as VLC has been able to play files.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

1.2 or nothing!

[tindog13]

So I take it the answer is or... "nothing"? This thread was started in Oct '09, the last post was Nov '11, it is now Jan '15 and version 2.1.5 still has the problem. Is this still being addressed? I guess I'll just go back to WMP for audio, but it is not an ideal solution for me.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Try 2.2.0, where most of it is fixed.

[Ratspeed]

.. Early 2019 and still the same problem persists. Nearly 10 years since the thread began. One would be hard-pressed to call me a troll for asking if there is ever going to be an update to fix this problem.

[xcheck]

For the chronicle. I'm too affected. Here with 3.0.6.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Use MMDEvice/Wasapi output and not DirectX

[NikitaSakdov]

Dunno about Windows, but on OSX the bug is still here. On default settings VLC frequently omits the beginning when playing wav/ogg/flac files. For small short sounds it can omit them completely. It happens 50% of time, and if files have silence at the beginning, then they play fine. Such randomness hints that some buffering issues are at play, since OSX caches recently accessed files in RAM, and it is not some crossfade or amplitude response effect. That is passable for movies, but incredible annoying, when you're trying to preview a collection of small sfx files.

I doubt OSX does that, because the system is being used by numerous professional audio producers. More likely VLC uses some broken sync scheme, and believes the playback has advanced, while in fact it haven't even started from the user standpoint. Or VLC could do heavy buffering, and when user starts playback, the buffer is still full, but VLC, instead of emptying the buffer, cuts the start the new sound. These are newbie bugs, but VLC is a free software and was likely designed by students or non-audio engineers hobby people, like system administrators.

TLDR: open source projects should consider using something like crowdfunding or patreon to hire professionals to fix all these warts.

[Azrael83]

If the bug bothers so much post a bug bounty on somewhere like https://www.bountysource.com/ get enough people to pitch in maybe it will be fixed.

[NikitaSakdov]

If the bug bothers so much post a bug bounty on somewhere like https://www.bountysource.com/ get enough people to pitch in maybe it will be fixed.

Living in Eastern Europe, it would be cheaper for me to fix it myself, than paying a freelancer, but I wont be submitting any patches, since the FOSS patching process is really bureaucratized. For example, at Audacity mailing list they explained that one guy implemented a full spectral editing for that app, but his patch was never accepted. Still I hope one day getting enough money to buy a commercial audio player

[Azrael83]

Noted.

[dexter442]

Still having this problem with the latest version. The last second or so of my video is cut off.

[tragicmagic]

I'm having this same issue on macOS 10.12.6. There is a delay of 2-3 seconds before audio starts playing when starting playback of any video. I'm running VLC 2.2.4. Here is the logfile I saved of this happening:

https://pastebin.com/18rx7BsN

And here's the contents of the VLC preferences file from ~/Library/Preferences/org.videolan.vlc/vlcrc:

https://pastebin.com/R2LrXc9y

If there is any fix for this, please let me know. Thanks!

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

VLC 2.2.x is no longer maintained.

[xvrcasalana]

I had this exact issue on macOS Big Sur when streaming to Chromecast (1st gen). The last 60 seconds of audio was cut-off for songs that are 6 minute long or more. I had to revert to vlc version 3.0.5, I was on version 3.0.11 (which is problematic). That resolved the issue!! It was VERY IRRITATING.

[Breton__01]

So I take it the answer is or... "nothing"? This thread was started in Oct '09, the last post was Nov '11, it is now Jan '15 and version 2.1.5 still has the problem. Is this still being addressed? I guess I'll just go back to WMP for audio, but it is not an ideal solution for me.

Well, it’s 2022 and there’s still no fix!

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Works fine here in VLC 3.0, released 2018.