Arch Linux

colbert

Member

Registered: 2007-12-16

Posts: 809

VLC sound strangeness...

I have my sound working a-ok in everything, no problems there, but VLC is behaving oddly. I tested it out and what's happening is when I play a video (any format, have tried .avi, .mpg, .mkv, etc.) I get some pops and crackles. Here's the wierd part: If I delete the ~/.vlc dir, and play a video with VLC it plays clean, perfectly, but if I play anything again (run vlc 2nd time after deleting ~/.vlc dir) the pops and crackles return. Delete the ~/.vlc dir again, sound is clean. So it's basically giving me one clean playback everytime the ~/.vlc dir is gone, then after that the pops and crackles are here to stay until ~/.vlc is removed again.

What the heck is going on? VLC is the bomb for me, I really really want it to work right. I'd hate to have to keep deleting the ~/.vlc directory everytime, especially losing my keyboard shortcuts and config over and over

P.S. I have searched here and seen a couple posts referring to rebuilding VLC from ABS, and I have no clue how to do that, even after checking the ABS section of the wiki, lol. (sorry, new to Arch )

Last edited by colbert (2007-12-18 18:07:28)

colbert

Member

Registered: 2007-12-16

Posts: 809

Re: VLC sound strangeness...

Okay, I have tested probably 100 different video files now. I have reduced the issues to the following:

- All .mov files appear to use libfaad as the audio codec, and the 2 channel files play fine, but the 5.1 files play with the center and front left channels reversed
- VLC seems to only pop and crackle here and there with video files that are stereo and using 128kpbs or lower quality audio. Files I played that are higher quality encodes play just fine, including 5.1.

Anyone have any ideas? Or can someone tell me exactly how to rebuild VLC using ABS? I'd love to give it a go and see if it changes anything.

Aakko

Member

Registered: 2007-10-23

Posts: 65

Re: VLC sound strangeness...

Have you tried different audio output plugins in vlc?

benmorgan

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2006-07-28

Posts: 67

Re: VLC sound strangeness...

If you are feeling desperate you could try vlc-svn from AUR. Maybe it'll work, definitely try Aakko's suggestion.

colbert

Member

Registered: 2007-12-16

Posts: 809

Re: VLC sound strangeness...

I tried other audio output, only default and ALSA work, both the same result.

benmorgan,

How would I do that? I have tried building VLC from ABS (if that makes sense, I am new to Arch terminology hehe) and I got errors some way into its build.

benmorgan

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2006-07-28

Posts: 67

Re: VLC sound strangeness...

Colbert, here's what you can do
I don't know how much you already know, so I'll just give you everything

1. If you just want to build vlc from ABS (not vlc-svn), then
2. Go to /var/abs, and run the command "sudo abs"
3. Then cd into /var/abs/extra/multimedia/ and copy the vlc directory into /var/abs/local
4. (Except for "sudo abs", everything can be done as a normal user)
5. Then cd into /var/abs/local/vlc
6. Run "makepkg -c"
7. If there are any errors you could post them here
8. If not, then you can "sudo pacman -U" the package and it should install

Hopefully that should get you through compilation ...
Getting vlc-svn from AUR isn't that much different, except that there are more dependancies,
you def. need to get subversion with pacman, and then you get the vlc-svn tar.gz file from AUR;
put it in /var/abs/local and do the above steps.

I'm assuming however that you know all that, right? Just that there were a bunch of error messages.
Try posting them here then.

Hope that helps you