smplayer for Lubuntu 14.04 does not play sound files and does not play sound for video files

Bug #1319483 reported by Scott Cowles Jacobs
12
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
smplayer (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I have used smplayer successfully for several years, under several [L]ubuntu versions.
Once in a while, it would not play a file, but I did not investigate the issue, as it was not many, and I had Gnome mplayer to play those (although for Lubuntu 13.10 gnome mplayer would sometimes (?) hang after playing a file).

Now that I have installed Lubuntu 14.04, SMplayer, will play video files, but no sound is played. Also, SMPlayer does not play audio files at all (window comes up, but time remains at 0:00 0:00).
If invoked from the terminal, no errors are displayed.

If the properties are displayed, there is no audio codec listed for either the video files or audio files.
If I then select a codec and hit "Apply" and then replay, nothing is different.

I DO have the correct audio codecs, as gnome mplayer plays videos with sound, and sound files just fine, and shows the audio codecs it uses.
{When I attempted to select the smplayer audio codec, I selected the one with the same name that gnome-mplayer was successful in using}

All audio and video files originate with YouTube, as downloaded by gnash, and (for audio files) converted by WinFF.

I have tested this with .ogg and .mp3 audio files, and whatever video files that gnash produces [gnome-mplayer shows "ffh264" for the video codec, and video type h264. File Properties says "MPEG-4 video (video/mp4)"] .

-Scott Jacobs
--------------------------------------------------
scott@scott-AsusM2N68-AM-Plus:~$ uname -a
Linux scott-AsusM2N68-AM-Plus 3.13.0-24-generic-tuxonice #47~ppa1-Ubuntu SMP Tue May 6 14:40:05 UTC 2014 i686 athlon i686 GNU/Linux

scott@scott-AsusM2N68-AM-Plus:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty
[This is actually Lubuntu]

This is SMPlayer v. 14.3.0 running on Linux [14.3.0-1~trusty1]
MPlayer2 2.0-701-gd4c5b7f-2ubuntu2 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team

gnome-mplayer is version 1.0.8-2

Revision history for this message
Scott Cowles Jacobs (scott092707) wrote :
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Scott Cowles Jacobs (scott092707) wrote :
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rvm (rvm) wrote :

The mplayer log (options -> view logs) would be very useful to try to figure out where the problem is.

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Scott Cowles Jacobs (scott092707) wrote :

I forgot - I meant to include the actual files that I was attempting to play.

The first one is a video. The video looks fine, but there is no sound.

This is the file that the video screenshot properties windows describe.

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Scott Cowles Jacobs (scott092707) wrote :

Here is the audio file (.ogg) that smplayer does not play.

This is the file that the audio screenshot properties windows describe.

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Scott Cowles Jacobs (scott092707) wrote :

Here is the first of two mplayer log files.

This first is for the video file.

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Scott Cowles Jacobs (scott092707) wrote :
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rvm (rvm) wrote :

The problem is that you're forcing to use the vorbis codec for audio. Go to preferences -> general and uncheck the option "remember settings for all files" and try again.

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Scott Cowles Jacobs (scott092707) wrote :

Actually, the problem was that the Output Driver was set to Pulse, when (according to "http://askubuntu.com/questions/106224/no-sound-after-lubuntu-installation" :

"Lubuntu unlike Ubuntu does not make use of Pulseaudio. Instead it uses Alsa for sound." the answer as of Feb 21 '12, anyway. There may be a quick way of finding out which my Lubuntu uses, but I was not able to find it.)

When I switched the Output Driver to Alsa from Pulse, I had sound.

Since I do not recall having any such problem with Lubuntu 13.10's smplayer, I must conclude that somehow someone accidentally set Lubuntu 14.04's default Output Driver to Pulse. (Either that, or for some reason Lubuntu 13.10 used Pulse, but used Alsa for 14.04...)

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in smplayer (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
vmc (vmclark) wrote :

I had this same problem using lubuntu 14.04. Thanks for this info. Switching to Alsa fixed it for me.

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