[DONE] VLC has lost audio output in all video formats

[isaiah36]

VLC was working fine before but it has lost the ability to put out audio. Video is fine. Tainted faad codec is installed.

TIA

[doktor5000]

If you start vlc from a terminal, any output in terminal when you play some files?

You can try to move away VLC's settings when vlc isn't running:

Code: Select all

mv ~/.config/vlc ~/.config/vlc-old

[isaiah36]

I booted from terminal, and started an AVI file that has played fine before. This is the output in terminal

Code: Select all

VLC media player 2.2.1 Terry Pratchett (Weatherwax) (revision 2.2.1-0-ga425c42)
[00000000014cd118] core libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[0000000001606278] qt4 interface error: Unable to load extensions module
libdvdnav: Using dvdnav version 5.0.3
libdvdread: Encrypted DVD support unavailable.
libdvdread: Couldn't find device name.
libdvdread:DVDOpenFilePath:findDVDFile /VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.IFO failed
libdvdread:DVDOpenFilePath:findDVDFile /VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.BUP failed
libdvdread: Can't open file VIDEO_TS.IFO.
libdvdnav: vm: failed to read VIDEO_TS.IFO
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
No accelerated IMDCT transform found


[isaiah36]

After renaming the settings dir the output is exactly the same.

[doktor5000]

Sound in general is working fine? Volume for vlc's streams are not turned down in mixer?

[isaiah36]

Yep, sound is there elsewhere. Music is playing. Mixer shows all sliders at max, including VLC.

[isaiah36]

After reboot, VLC has audio again. I am in Mate desktop now, clean and fast. File manager springs up instantly, as it should from an SSD, not in 3-4 seconds of bouncing icon like Dolphin. I got rid of everything in the menu with a 'K' in it. Goodbye, Plasma!

[isaiah36]

Foobar is hogging the sound, maybe because I'm using the direct kernel plugin. When I shut down Foobar then VLC plays sound just fine. Mystery solved!

[doktor5000]

wine should use the pulseaudio driver, otherwise you'll run into more such issues.

[isaiah36]

I haven't changed any Wine defaults. Foobar has a plugin that streams direct to kernel, and it recognized the hardware correctly inside Wine as "HDA Intel MID - CX20585". So I am playing back through it instead of the "Primary Sound Driver" option. I have output set to 32 bit depth and the sound is gorgeous! It blows away the Linux native players totally. So I've decided to live with the workaround, that is shut Foobar down whenever its not actually playing, instead of leaving it open.

[isaiah36]

A further point of detail has emerged -- it seems Foobar is only locking sound when it is on 'Pause', not when it is on 'Stop'. It is possible to leave Foobar open, and have VLC, Youtube, etc. share the sound hardware.