Bug#585555: Please don't set the default audio output in /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf

[Reinhard Tartler]

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 17:18:18 (CEST), Pascal Gervais wrote:

> On 2010-06-11 19:31, Andres Mejia wrote:
>> Considering the integration of pulseaudio by many distributions and
>> projects, and considering the fact that Debian's gnome package
>> ultimitely depends on pulseaudio through it's dependencies, it's
>> reasonable to assume that pulseaudio will be installed on a user's
>> machine, for the majority case.
>> 
>
> First, I don't care about other distributions, I'm using Debian!
>
> Secondly, Debian has five different installation CD-ROMs: One with
> GNOME, one with KDE, one with Xfce and/or LXDE, and two net
> installation CD-ROMs (netinst and businesscard) with which we can
> install plenty other wonderful window managers. Without forgetting the
> LiveCDs available with the four major desktop environments
> (GNOME,KDE,Xfce and LXDE).
>
> Third, Debian is not Ubuntu. Debian users are generally more advanced
> users who does not necessarily install it with the CD with GNOME as you
> seem to think.
>
> Fourth, GNOME is not the center of the universe!
>
> Fifth, MPlayer is not a GNOME apps!

irrelevant in all points.

>> Also, I think having the sound device taken over by one program,
>> leaving other programs with no sound, is a bigger issue than waiting
>> a few seconds for mplayer to start playback.
>> 
>
> And I think having to wait six to seven seconds before MPlayer start my
> playlist and that having to wait six to seven seconds between each
> audio files of my playlist is a bug, an unacceptable behavior, a

I agree that this is a bug

> regression that occurred when you decided to set pulseaudio as the
> default audio output of MPlayer.

on your system but obviously not on others

> Anyway, in case you are interested in finding what is wrong, here is
> the outpout of MPlayer when it tries to find pulseaudio:
> waitpid(): No child processes
> AO: [pulse] Init failed: Internal error
> Failed to initialize audio driver 'pulse'
>
> 'waitpid(): No child processes' is where MPlayer takes all that time
> before starting each audio and video playback.

as said this symptom cannot be reproduced on other systems. We'd need a
more thourough analysis in order to fix the issue. But I agree with
Andres that not setting the default ao to pulse as you demand is not a
good solution for Debian.

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4