Video ok, no sound just for MPlayer (WAS: [MPlayer-users] Re: Oly 3 sec of video)

[Hans du Plooy]

On Sunday 04 April 2004 15:39, Roberto Fernandes Tavares Neto wrote:
> Hi again...
>
> I could get the videos working fine, and XMMS plays sound w/ no problem.
>
> But the videos are soundless. The mplayer founds the codec, but...
>
> Checking audio filter chain for 44100Hz/2ch/16bit -> 44100Hz/2ch/16bit...
> AF_pre: af format: 2 bps, 2 ch, 44100 hz, little endian signed int
> AF_pre: 44100Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian)
> Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.
> Audio: no sound

My guess is you're running KDE, right?  Try mplayer -ao arts

Arts is a sound mixer, which allows you to play more than one sound at a time.  
Some soundcards, i.e. the Soundblaster Live! does this in hardware, so you 
never have to worry about that.

The nasty bit about arts is that there's often a slight delay in the sound.  
In your KControl center, go to the audio properties.  There's a setting that 
specifies how long arts will be idle before suspending.  The default is 60.  
In other words, you have to wait 60 seconds after using sound through arts to 
use your sound card directly (what you would like to do for movies).  Set 
this to something more sensible like 1 second.

Stupid I know, but it's getting better slowly. I wish they would write the 
sound drivers to do this directly (maybe Alsa9 can, anybody?) so we don't 
have to waste time dealing with rubbish like esd and alsa.

Hope this helps

Hans