[MPlayer-users] Another newbie with a broken sound config...?

[Bryn Jeffries]

Hi there,

I've just started using MPlayer, and the visual results are
superb. However, I have failed in getting sound to work, and wonder
whether anyone could help. I'll warn you first: I am using an ALSA
driver, and it is another DEMUXER error problem...

My sound card is, according to lspci, a Multimedia audio controller:
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 30). I
haven't had any success getting this card to work with the OSS/Free
driver, but it sounds good using alsa-driver-0.9.0rc3-fr6 using
applications such as xmms. (It also works under the ogle DVD player,
although I read in your docs that the synchronisation in other players
is less sophisticated that mplayer's).

Using the mplayer-0.90rc2-1.athlon.rpm binary I got a warning about
"DEMUXER: Too many (4096 in 8268068 bytes) video packets in the
buffer!". It mentions in the FAQ that this appears to be a problem
with many soundcard drivers, and that for alsa 0.5 drivers the -ao oss
option is not suitable. I thought I'd try the alsa9 option to see
whether I got a better result, and had to compile this option in (I
used the MPlayer-20021229 cvs snapshot, which is the most recent at
present). This compiled fine, but gives the same errors. The relevant
bits printed from mplayer (using "mplayer -ao alsa9 -vo xv -dvd 1")
are:

==========================================================================
alsa-init: testing and bugreports are welcome.
alsa-init: requested format: 24000 Hz, 2 channels, Signed 16-bit
(Little-Endian)alsa-init: 1 soundcard found, using: hw:0,0
alsa9: 24000 Hz/2 channels/4 bpf/65536 bytes buffer/Signed 16 bit
Little Endian
AO: [alsa9] 24000Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian)
Building audio filter chain for 24000Hz/2ch/16bit ->
24000Hz/2ch/16bit...
Start playing...
a52: error at resampling

DEMUXER: Too many (4096 in 8268068 bytes) video packets in the buffer!
Maybe you are playing a non-interleaved stream/file or the codec
failed?
For .AVI files, try to force non-interleaved mode with the -ni option.
alsa-space: xrun of at least 73.748 msecs. resetting stream 0.0% 0 0
0%

I can hear some crackling at the beginning of playback, but no other sound.
I know this is in the FAQ, but are there any further suggestions on how to
get the sound working? I have tried oss and esd audio options,
-autosync up to 30, -fps down to 10, but none of these appear to
improve the sound. I would be happy to provide more feedback if that
would help get around this (perhaps I could help test alsa-init as
suggested in the output?).

Many thanks for any help.

Bryn