GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 529061
Distorted (garbled) sound in totem-xine when playing Linear PCM audio (often used in camera's videos)
Last modified: 2009-05-05 16:42:11 UTC
Please describe the problem: Sound is garbled (horribly distorted, with additional noises) when playing the video or audio files encoded in Linear (Microsoft) PCM (often used in photo camera's videos) with totem-xine, if totem's volume control is not at 100%. It sounds more distorted the lower the volume control is set. If I set the volume controller in Totem to full (100%) then sound is normal (clean). It's a really important issue for totem-xine users as sound is broken in videos, produced by the majority of photo cameras (most of cameras records audio in Linear PCM format) :( Steps to reproduce: 1. Open http://launchpadlibrarian.net/7145826/DSCF0640.AVI , http://web.t-online.hu/majorandras/HPIM1411.AVI or http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photogallery/Videos/2006-migshootdown.wav file with totem-xine 2. Decrease volume with the volume controller in totem. Actual results: Sound is garbled (horribly distorted with additional noises) if totem's volume control is not at 100%. It sounds more distorted the lower the volume control is set. Expected results: Sound should be clean in any volume level, like it's when playing with another media player, for example with gxine there are no problems. Does this happen every time? yes Other information: If I set the volume controller in Totem to full (100%) then sound is normal (clean). Movie file sound characteristics: 176 kbps, Codec: Linear PCM, Sample rate: 22050 Hz (problem is in all sample rates and bitrates of Linear PCM) I also tested these avi and wav files with gxine ver. 0.5.901 (using libxine1 ver. 1.1.11.1) and didn't noticed any problems with sound in any volume level, so, this is not xine-lib bug. Problem exists in Totem 2.22.1, 2.20, 2.18 versions (and maybe in older), used vairous xine-lib versions, latest was 1.1.11.1 I've tested with various Debian and Ubuntu versions. Look at these bugreports for more info: http://bugs.debian.org/385924 https://launchpad.net/bugs/102426
You probably have different configurations used in the different programs, I don't see how Totem could change the sound coming out of your system when it doesn't touch the sound stream one bit. Please copy ~/.config/totem/xine_config to ~/.xine/config and run xine on your sample file.
(In reply to comment #1) > I don't see how Totem could change the sound coming out of your system when it > doesn't touch the sound stream one bit. > Please copy ~/.config/totem/xine_config to ~/.xine/config and run xine on your > sample file. I've did this, but gxine still plays clean sound, while totem-xine - horribly distorted. Note, I had no ~/.xine/config file in my system at all. I've tested, that gxine uses it's own config file, so, I compared ~/.config/totem/xine_config ~/.config/gxine/config with meld and didn't found anything different, except commented lines. I even did cp ~/.config/totem/xine_config ~/.config/gxine/config, but this didn't changed anything - totem-xine still plays horribly distorted sound, while gxine - clean. Both programs isn't running before cp (I've checked this with ps aux). To be 100% sure I've copied gxine's config file (~/.config/gxine/config) to ~/.config/totem/xine_config (as I told already - these files were almost identifical, except comments), but this also didn't change anything - totem-xine still produces horribly distorted sound :( As I told in initial bugreport: the only way to fix totem-xine problem is to set the volume controller in Totem to full (100%). The same workaround is reproduced by other people, see http://bugs.debian.org/385924 for example. Btw, as you see from Ubuntu and Debian bugreports - this bug is already confirmed by 4 independent people with different totem-xine versions (I found at least 2 bugreports in Ubuntu and 1 in Debian about this problem), so this is real and easy reproducible problem. Have you tried to reproduce this bug by yourself? > You probably have different configurations used in the different programs It seems problem isn't in configuration, but even then problem is in config file, initially created by totem-xine (I've reproduced this bug on Ubuntu systems, started from LiveCD, there are no config files in user's home when you start from LiveCD) This only happens with files, that have Linear PCM audio, files with audio in other formats plays without any problems in totem-xine.
gxine changes the volume using the XINE_PARAM_AUDIO_VOLUME property, which changes the volume at the sound card level (ie. like a mixer would). Totem uses the XINE_PARAM_AUDIO_AMP_LEVEL property, to avoid changing the system volume. You can report this bug against xine-lib at http://bugs.xine-project.org/
*** Bug 581451 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Forwarded to <http://bugs.xine-project.org/show_bug.cgi?id=244>.