ffmpeg not working properly in 12.3 but was in 12.1

English Multimedia
1

I had the following command run just fine in OpenSUSE 12.1:
ffmpeg -f alsa -i hw:2,0 -c:a pcm_s16le -f x11grab -s 1440x900 -r 10 -i :0.0 -c:v libx264 -threads 0 ${out}.mkv

I could view the mkv file just fine in mplayer. However, I recently install OpenSUSE 12.3 and the very same command does not work well. There are two main issues. First, I can’t view it in mplayer anymore but only in mplayer2. Second, the worst thing is that it stops recording the sound after a few seconds.

Here are some more details:

  • In both cases I have the EXACT same hardware configuration.
  • I also installed ffmpeg 1.2 in 12.3 and I get the same (bad) result.
  • ffmpeg -f alsa -i hw:2,0 -c:a pcm_s16le ${out}.mkv records the sound just fine.
  • ffmpeg -f x11grab -s 1440x900 -r 10 -i :0.0 -c:v libx264 ${out}.mkv works fine but must be viewed with mplayer2.
  • Combining the two with ffmpeg -f alsa -i hw:2,0 -c:a pcm_s16le -f x11grab -s 1440x900 -r 10 -i :0.0 -c:v libx264 ${out}.mkv gives the same (bad) result.

Is there a hardware configuration that could be causing this? Again, this is the EXACT same hardware configuration, ffmpeg command with the only difference being OpenSUSE 12.3 vs. 12.1. Any thoughts on why this is happening? Thanks in advance for your help!

2

If all relevant installed applications and all hardware are the same, then it could be a config file on your 12.3 setup … possibly something in .mplayer directory.

I sent the command


ffmpeg -f alsa -i hw:1,0 -c:a pcm_s16le -f x11grab -s 1440x900 -r 10 -i :0.0 -c:v libx264 -threads 0 test.mkv

on my openSUSE-12.3 and the resultant test.mkv plays fine on my 12.3 system. (I don’t have an hw:2,0 on my system, which is why I used hw:1,0).

My system has:
ffmpeg-2.0.1-2.2.x86_64
MPlayer-1.1+35127-3.1.x86_64

I don’t have MPlayer2 installed.

3

This may not be related to your problem, but…

A couple months ago SMPlayer (a frontend to MPlayer) started crashing on mkv’s, but would play avi’s reasonably well IINM after changing the video decoder from vdpau to something else. Then everything would be bad, and I had to change to MPlayer2 too. Running MPlayer from the command line gave an error in one of the libraries, I don’t recall which, but it turned out that smplayer & mplayer were from the packman repo, while the library was from the standard/updated installation. Installing the same version of the library, but from packman, fixed the problem.