problems with banshee and vlc.

English Multimedia
#1

I am having a few problems with playback in both vlc and banshee.

In banshee I am unable to play either mp3 or .m4a files. Both just sit there in the list with a red X next to it and do nothing.

In vlc, both files play, however, the sound only seems to work when it wants to. When I first tried to play the files, there was no sound. Last night it was working, now today I have no sound again. The same problem also seems to be happening with totem. Although I am not sure the sound ever worked there as I don’t normally use it for music.

I know my sound is working fine, I always here the sounds when gnome starts and I have no trouble with sound watching online videos.

I have downloaded several gstreamer plugins to try to get banshee to work but none seemed to have helped. I have also downloaded the gnome pack from here

What do I need to install to make banshee play the files and why does my sound not work in things like VLC and totem but plays fine watching online videos?

Thanks,
Joe

#2

I can’t help with banshee nor totem (I never use them). I do use vlc, so I would like to try help there.

Next time your sound does not work in one of those apps, please copy and paste the following into an xterm/konsole (with regular user permissions):
lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*
The idea of running that command is to see if there is a device that has seized the audio, and not let go of it.

You could also change the output module in your various media players to “alsa” (which allows mixing between audio players) so that if one device has seized the audio (and won’t let go) you can still play audio in other players.

I had thought vlc came with all needed codec’s, but I am not 100% up to speed on it. My vlc just works but I have so many other apps installed, if there were a indirect dependency hiccup on your PC, I would not know about it. When you installed vlc, did you “force” the install? .

#3

Next time your sound does not work in one of those apps, please copy and paste the following into an xterm/konsole (with regular user permissions):
lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*
The idea of running that command is to see if there is a device that has seized the audio, and not let go of it.

All it returns is:
lsof: command not found

You could also change the output module in your various media players to “alsa” (which allows mixing between audio players) so that if one device has seized the audio (and won’t let go) you can still play audio in other players.

This seems to have worked. Is there a separate program to adjust the alsa levels with? The sound works now but with any amount of bass in a song it sounds horrible. I ran ‘alsamixer’ but it only allows me to adjust the master volume.

I don’t see any way to set the output to alsa though with totem or banshee. I don’t really care about totem since vlc is working but I am thinking that if I ever manage to get banshee to work it will have the same problem of having no audio

I had thought vlc came with all needed codec’s, but I am not 100% up to speed on it. My vlc just works but I have so many other apps installed, if there were a indirect dependency hiccup on your PC, I would not know about it. When you installed vlc, did you “force” the install? *.

Well the songs and videos always seemed to play in VLC, just no sound, so I guess the codecs were there. I don’t know why banshee can’t use them though. If I remember correctly, in 10.3 I had to install some gstreamer plugins to get it to work, but once I downloaded those there were no problems. That doesn’t seem to be the case with 11.0. I’m going to go back through them and see if I missed any or possibly just install them all and hope that works. Also I didnt force the install of VLC, I either installed it through yast or directly from the packman site and I don’t believe there were any errors/problems.

Thanks again,
Joe*

#4

Type:
rpm -q lsof
and if it is not installed, then install lsof with:
zypper install lsof

#5

Ensure you have w32codec-all and xvid installed.

You can also search the Packman site, as it has a great search engine:
PackMan website
(take a look at the upper left hand corner and click on the magnifying glass icon to get the advance search menu.

#6

I installed it, here’s the output:

lsof: WARNING: can’t stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /var/lib/gdm/.gvfs
Output information may be incomplete.
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
pulseaudi 2799 joe 27u CHR 116,6 0t0 3151 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 2799 joe 33u CHR 116,6 0t0 3151 /dev/snd/controlC0
mixer_app 2955 joe 20u CHR 116,6 0t0 3151 /dev/snd/controlC0

Ensure you have w32codec-all and xvid installed.

I had the w32codec package and installed xvid but there was no changed in banshee. I also updated the gstreamer package that shows it for mp3 playback as there was an updated but that didn’t change anything either.

Thanks,

Joe

#7

It appears to me you have something wrong there. You should not get that warning. You could surf on that warning.

For example, while I am playing a music video with vlc, I get:

oldcpu@stonehenge:/home/oldcpu> lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/snd/*
COMMAND   PID  USER    FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
kmix     3917  oldcpu   10u   CHR  116,9      7576 /dev/snd/controlC0
vlc     11141  oldcpu  mem    CHR  116,7      7564 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
vlc     11141  oldcpu    9r   CHR  116,4      7296 /dev/snd/timer
vlc     11141  oldcpu   10u   CHR  116,7      7564 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
oldcpu@stonehenge:/home/oldcpu>

with no such warnings.

#8

hmm, I guess it is something related to the gnome virtual file system not being supported by lsof but shouldn’t really cause a problem.

For now things are fine. VLC seems to play movies/shows without any problems. I am using MPD and ario for music and although it is using alsa the sound quality is fine.

I still would like to get banshee working as I need it for ipod support but that is not a huge priority.

Thanks for the help,

Joe