Arch Linux

beachbird

Member

Registered: 2022-10-21

Posts: 4

Sound and video issues in other programs when running MPlayer in Bash

When I run audio files in MPlayer in Bash, I have various audio and video issues in other programs. I mostly run Alacrity with Tmux, but I have the same problems in Xterm.

If I open a Youtube video page in Firefox, the video will show a single frame image. It will not play sound or run the video. If drag the track slider to another part of the video, the page will show a different frame image, but still won't play the video.

If I open an audio file in VLC, the track slider shows the time of the file advancing, but there is no sound. If I open a video, the video plays, but there is no sound.

Running programs with apulse ("apulse firefox") seems to solve these issues. However, this is annoying.

Even if I don't have MPlayer running, I sometimes (but not always) get a similar problem if I have an instance of Firefox running with the apulse command and then try to use another program without apulse.

This hasn't always happened with my system, but it has been happening for maybe about a month now. I don't remember it happening after a specific program install or system update. What is happening and how can I fix it? Thanks.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,935

Re: Sound and video issues in other programs when running MPlayer in Bash

Configure mplayer to use a pulse device directly and/or explicitly select an ALSA device that actually goes over dmix (normally the "default" device node)

For a general understanding of what and why it is happening I suggest you read this post I made some while ago: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 8#p1639728

If this is insufficient to get an understanding of why the things are the way they are and how you can fix it, post

sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*
aplay -lL
pactl list cards
pactl list sinks
pactl list-sink-inputs

during reproduction of the issue

Any particular reason you mention apulse explicitly? Are you actively trying to avoid pulseaudio/pipewire? Any custom ALSA config? Post that as well if so.