[MPlayer-users] Solved debian wmv Video used to play but Doesn't now.

[Martin McCormick]

Mike Hodson <mystica at gmail.com> writes:
> Martin, you do you have the .WMV file locally, correct?

Yes and I don't remember all the details about how I got it as I
have slept a few times since 2006.:-)

	A coworker of mine at the time had seen it and had it on
her Windows computer.  Where she got it, I have no idea.

	I've got it working now.  Read on.

	I am also actually replying to 2 different messages, here
and my thanks to both posters.
stan <gyvoy at q.com> writes:
> The alsa device didn't open, so you are never going to get sound.  The
> error sounds like you are requesting the device set itself to a frame
> rate that it doesn't allow.

Right!

  >Have you changed your sound device?

No but I used to have pulseaudio running quite some time ago.
Then I said,

> >       Any constructive suggestions are welcome.  The file in
> > question is listed on youtube.  It is a good test file to see if
> > one can play the sound from an older .wmv file and, so far, one
> > can't although it used to play with no issues.

>If  Is it available?  Try
> aplay -lv

That worked.

> then if the device is there and recognized,
> aplay [some wav file]
> or
> aplay -v -D plughw:0,0 [some wav file]

	That also worked. In this case, the old Dell I am using reported
a CS4237B.  It doesn't like the sound format.

> with the first 0 replaced with the device from the aplay -lv output.
> This form compensates for frame rate differences.  Does it play?

It does.  The test wav file I chose turned out to be 8K sampling
and it played that fine.
> 
> Do you have pulseaudio installed?  Is it controlling the device?  Check
> with pavucontrol in the gui.
> 
> What if you remove the line completely from the configuration file and
> let mplayer find the audio device?

	An excellent question. This is with no specified audio driver:

$ mplayer -quiet kosovo.wmv
MPlayer 1.3.0 (Debian), built with gcc-6.2.1 (C) 2000-2016 MPlayer Team

Playing kosovo.wmv.
libavformat version 57.56.101 (external)
Mismatching header version 57.56.100
ASF file format detected.
[asfheader] Audio stream found, -aid 1
[asfheader] Video stream found, -vid 2
VIDEO:  [WMV2]  320x240  24bpp  1000.000 fps  185.0 kbps (22.6 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Forced video codec: null
Opening video decoder: [null] Null video decoder
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
VO: [null] 320x240 => 320x240 BGR 24-bit 
Selected video codec: [null] vfm: null (NULL codec (no decoding!))
==========================================================================
Load subtitles in ./
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
libavcodec version 57.64.101 (external)
AUDIO: 32000 Hz, 2 ch, floatle, 40.0 kbit/1.95% (ratio: 5000->256000)
Selected audio codec: [ffwmav2] afm: ffmpeg (DivX audio v2 (FFmpeg))
==========================================================================
AO: [pulse] Init failed: Connection refused
Failed to initialize audio driver 'pulse'
[AO_ALSA] Unable to set samplerate-2: Invalid argument
Failed to initialize audio driver 'alsa'
[AO SDL] Samplerate: 32000Hz Channels: Stereo Format floatle
[AO SDL] using aalib audio driver.
[AO SDL] Unsupported audio format: 0x1d.
[AO SDL] Unable to open audio: No available audio device
Failed to initialize audio driver 'sdl:aalib'
Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.
Audio: no sound
Starting playback...


Exiting... (End of file)

	The exit was after about the correct play time.

	Here is a little background.  At about the time I could
play this file, pulseaudio was installed because I 
A. had an application that used pulseaudio libraries and also
B.  I wrote some audio applications in C that used /dev/dspx
where x stands for a sound card.  The examples I based the C code
on were obsolete but I thought that was how one communicated with
audio devices at the time I wrote the code.  If you still need
/dev/dspx, install alsa-oss but the better solution is to write
the code so that you don't need /dev/dsp.

	I really appreciate all the help I have gotten here in
figuring out why the video in question doesn't play.  

	With no audio device specified in config, I had a flash
of brilliance and tried a popular usb sound card that I normally
use for recording audio as a playback device.
mplayer	-quiet kosovo.wmv -ao alsa:device=hw=1.0

	It worked perfectly.  The mystery is solved.  That
CS4237B is part of the mother board and gives fairly decent audio
but it is a bear-bones sound card and there are lots of ways for
it not to work.  If I don't put the module in /etc/modules and
use udev rules, the usb device and the on-board sound system
trade places as Card 1 and Card 0 about 50% of the time after
each boot.

	Forcing the alsa sound driver in /.mplayer/config
prevented the usb sound device from working the first time I
tried that.

	Since the CS4237B couldn't play the audio format in the
video, it was game over.

	Again, many thanks to all.

Martin WB5AGZ