[pulseaudio-discuss] How to debug choppy audio in Totem & Mythtv

Colin Guthrie gmane at colin.guthr.ie
Wed Jan 27 02:38:17 PST 2010


'Twas brillig, and Jeremy Visser at 27/01/10 09:54 did gyre and gimble:
> On 27/01/10 20:18, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>> If MythTV is using ALSA:front then it's not using PA. MythTV also has
>> code that automatically suspends PA when MythTV runs. Unless Fedora have
>> patched MythTV to not do that (as I have in Mandriva) then you wont get
>> to use MythTV with pulse.
> 
> Which, frankly, is a silly, because it suspends PA in its entirety, even
> if the audio device in question is perfectly free to use directly over ALSA.
> 
> Case in point: I play music in Rhythmbox via PA via BlueZ to my
> Bluetooth headset. My internal sound card is not being used, but when I
> fire up MythTV, it obnoxiously cuts off the audio to my headset by
> blindly suspending PA, despite the fact that it would cause no conflicts
> whatsoever.
> 
> There is native PA support in the latest trunk builds of MythTV, but it
> is still quite buggy -- for example the audio screws up when you timeshift.
> 
> It's an uphill battle to say the least.

Indeed this is why I patched it in the Mdv version (especially as my
tests showed that using ALSA:default + PA was pretty much perfect on the
two systems I have here).

I did intend to have a look at it myself by I'm not entirely sure how
the whole timing mode works in the internal player in MythTV. I'd have
hoped that the audio timing would drive the video (allowing for higher
lag bluetooth devices as you point out) without any sync issues.

Sadly I've a) Not had time, b) Don't really know much about the actual
audio client side of PA programming and c) I've started using XBMC as my
frontend.

(Now with XBMC, I do get a problem with xbmc and 5.1 downmixing to
stereo which I'm not sure is PAs fault or not (think it may be) but
that's a totally different story and it's an older version of PA too!!)

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

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