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dimitar

Member

Registered: 2011-01-27

Posts: 59

[SOLVED] PulseAudio and TV Tuner Audio Source

Hi all,

I'm trying to use my AverMedia A827 USB TV tuner with MPlayer and PulseAudio. Basically, it works, but I have troubles with the audio source and PulseAudio. I searched the Internet and I've come up with two solutions, which unfortunately, work only partially:

1. MPlayer uses the emulated ALSA input device:

$ PULSE_SOURCE=alsa_input.usb-AVerMedia_AVerTV_300589501437-00-A8270.analog-stereo mplayer -ao pulse -tv device=/dev/video0:input=0:normid=0:chanlist=europe-west:alsa:immediatemode=0:audiorate=48000:amode=1:adevice=pulse tv://E11 

This works, but the video stutters (I suppose, because the sound from the tuner is being delayed due to the emulation of the ALSA device) and mplayer says "Your system is too SLOW to play this!"

2. Redirect the TV tuner audio source to the default output device using PulseAudio loopback module:

$  mplayer -tv device=/dev/video0:input=0:normid=0:chanlist=europe-west tv://E11

and

$ pactl load-module module-loopback source=alsa_input.usb-AVerMedia_AVerTV_300589501437-00-A8270.analog-stereo

This approach give much better results, but it has the following drawbacks:
1) the audio comes a bit later after the video, i. e. they are not synchronized (this is the most annoying issue, the rest are minor)
2) one cannot control the volume with the player controls
3) it's not very convenient to manually redirect the input audio to the output device.

So, does anyone has a suggestion how I could improve the things? More specifically, how could I eliminate the audio delay and have synchronized audio and video?

Thanks in advance!

Dimitar

Last edited by dimitar (2011-02-28 11:33:29)

dimitar

Member

Registered: 2011-01-27

Posts: 59

Re: [SOLVED] PulseAudio and TV Tuner Audio Source

I managed to find a very simple solution to my problem: I just told pulseaudio not to manage the audio input device of the TV tuner (i.e. put it into "Off" mode using pavucontrol) and then I can access the input device directly:

mplayer -ao pulse -tv device=/dev/video0:input=0:normid=0:chanlist=europe-west:alsa:immediatemode=0:audiorate=48000:amode=1:adevice=hw.1,0 tv://E11

The nice thing is that pulse audio still controls the output device and mplayer uses it, but there are no video or audio delays.

I think the perfect solution would be to add support for pulseaudio input devices into mplayer, but for now I'm happy with what I've got So, problem solved

Greetings,
Dimitar