11.4: how to bypass pulseaudio in mplayer

English Multimedia
#1

I have the restricted format software installed via one-click-install. I found that in 11.4 mplayer would fail to start playing a MP3 clip, but succeed on the second and subsequent tries, but only within a short time afterwards. A quick examination showed that this was because mplayer was firing off an instance of pulseaudio, which stayed around for a while, then exited.

This was not acceptable for a clip played from a cron job so I found the way to bypass pulseaudio for mplayer was by putting this line in ~/.mplayer/config:

ao=alsa

Worked fine afterwards. I don’t know if this affects the ability to output audio from other apps while the sound device is in use, but I don’t have that situation, so this workaround suits me.

Take this tip for what it’s worth. If it breaks something, keep the pieces. :slight_smile:

#2

what would be the disadvantage of just removing pulseaudio?

#3

Let me know what you find out, I’m too lazy to try on this machine, but I may need the info for another machine. :slight_smile:

#4

darn, I’m just as lazy and since all play fine so far I’m not gonna fix what ain’t (to my knowledge) broken