Audio/Video Problems

[Mark Greenwood]

On 04/01/13 20:09, Bill vance wrote:
> On 1/3/13, Mark Greenwood <fatgerman at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 3 Jan 2013, at 12:20, Bill vance wrote:
>>
>>> Howdy folks;
>>>
>>> I'm running a fresh install of Kubuntu 10.04 on an i386 machine, and
>>> have downloaded most
>>> of the Medibuntu progs, and I'm still experiencing some wierd
>>> audio/video problems.
>>>
>>> 1.   With both files and DVDs, The videos stay as they first appear,
>>> and then every second or
>>>      two, they twitch a little, about a quarter inch or so instead of
>>> flowing smoothly, as they
>>>      should.
>> What are you using to play them back? Does sound flow smoothly or is that
>> also jumpy?
>
> I currently have Dragon player, Kaffeine, Smplayer, and vlc.  They all
> act pretty much
> the same, though smplayer appears to be marginally better than the
> rest.  As it used to be,
> playing files worked just fine, but DVDs didn't work.  When I made a
> solid effort to try a
> bunch of stuff to get them working, file playing went away.  Now with
> a fresh install,
> they're still gone.
>
> On DVDs, I get the first two drumbeats of the MGM Lion intro, and then
> it goes away.
> On files, it works fine for a bit, and then goes away later.
>
>
>> Have you tried other players - VLC is usually the best, or SMPlayer?
>> It sounds like a sync problem - the player is trying to sync the audio with
>> the video and isn't getting the clock information it needs. This could be a
>> video driver issue or it could be related to your sound card issue. Trying
>> VLC or SMPlayer will determine whether it is a Phonon issue or not. I
>> suspect it probably is.
>
> How?

OK well if it's the same in VLC and SMPlayer then it's not a phonon
issue, since they don't use it. Have you tried messing about the with
video and sound output options in SMPlayer to see if any make a
difference? The audio output should be 'pulse' and the video output
should be 'xv' unless you are using nvidia drivers in which case it
should be 'vdpau'.

However it does seem like you either have a disc performance issue (as
Basil mentioned) or a seriously-screwed-up audio clock issue.

>
>
>>> 2.   I have an Aoundblaster AWE-16 sound card, and an internal, (on
>>> the motherboard),
>>>      sound interface that has never been hooked up to anything, and
>>> never will be.  When I
>>>      reboot, this little window appears in the lower left corner of
>>> the screen, announcing that
>>>      it's switched from the sound card to the motherboard interface,
>>> and do I want to switch
>>>      back?
>>>
>>> 3.   Just now when I re-booted, a large window opened up, announcing
>>> that a long list of
>>>      sound devices, (inputs, outputs, and etc.), have been removed,
>>> and do I want kubuntu
>>>      to forget about them?
>>>
>> This appears to be normal behaviour when you have multiple sound cards. When
>> I say 'normal' I mean 'that's the way it (mis)behaves for everybody'. If you
>> can disable the onboard sound card in the BIOS that is the best way to avoid
>> problems like this until they fix Phonon (or perhaps it's pulse audio) so it
>> works properly. What might be happening is that it is trying to play the
>> login sound but is doing so before some part of the audio system is ready,
>> so it doesn't detect the sound blaster and thinks it has gone away. Try
>> disabling the login sound so the system has more time to ready itself before
>> Phonon tries to do anything. I had the same issues when I had two sound
>> cards installed.
>
> How/where do I disable the login sound?
It's somewhere in System Settings->Application and System Notifications.
Choose 'Event Source: KDE Workspace' and it should be under there.

>
>
>>> 4.   Nothings working with youtube.  How do I get a version of flash
>>> that works, and what
>>>      does it need for setups?
>> There appear to be two ways to install flash. There is a package in the
>> 'partner' repository called 'adobe-flashplugin' and one in 'multiverse'
>> called 'flashplugin-installer'. I'm using the second one and it's working
>> fine for me, although they both seem to install the same version. Shouldn't
>> need anything for setup. It does struggle on i386 systems though, these days
>> the 64 bit version actually seems to work a lot better. You don't say which
>> browser you're using either, if it's Rekonq then you should install a better
>> one - either Chromium of Firefox.
>>
>> Mark
>
> I just triied the second one and it doesn't seem to do anything new.

OK it sounds like we need to sort out your audio issues. Have you tried
disabling the onboard sound chip in the BIOS? That really is going to be
the best way to solve these problems. If you can't do that you could, as
an experiment, take the soundblaster out and use the onboard sound card
just to see if it something to do with having multiple sound cards.

Mark

>
>
>>> Thanks in advance for any/all help.
>>>
>>> Bill