GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 601662
music skipping (playbin2)
Last modified: 2011-03-27 02:38:38 UTC
[originally reported by greylander at gmail dot com in bug 581936; I've copied most of their comments in here] I am using Jaunty 64-bit, on a 4 cpu 8 Gig machine. The problem, for me, is specific to Rhythmbox. I have tried several other music players with no problem at all. The "skips" that I encounter happen randomly several times per typical song, or roughly one skip per minute of playback. For me this does not seem to be a resource issue -- the skips happen quite often when I am doing nothing else -- no window resizing, menus, dialogs. There might be background processes doing something, but the system resources are not being taxed at all. I have observe system monitor when the skips occur and there is no jump in cpu utilization (which is generally less than 20% of the 4 cpu's). Likewise there is plenty of resident memory available. [later comment] Cross-fading NOT enabled. I never use cross-fading. The skipping occurs on all songs -- at least I have not noticed particular songs that do or do not skip. My collection is mostly mp3's, but there are some flac, ogg, wmv... I do not know if the problem is specific to any file type, but I doubt it. The skipping occurs several times per typical track (2-5 times on a 3-4 minute track) on nearly every track. Very rarely, a complete track will play without a skip (or maybe this just means I was not paying attention). This has been a constant problem since I started using rhythmbox on this machine (I have only had Jaunty on this machine). I have given up on Rhythmbox for the time being (althrough I prefer it's interface and library organization). I currently use Banshee. The problem does not occur with the following music players (or other playback): mouse-over preview (which I believe uses totem) movie player (which I also belive uses totem) banshee gmusicbrowser songbird audacious *** OK, this is interesting, in compiling the above list, I just tested Audacious for the first time. In past testing I have liked to go back and replay a track in Rhythmbox just to verify that the skipping occurs again after it played clean in another application. So I did this again (haven't used Rhythmbox much since I tried all those others and settled on Banshee). Now I have just played four tracks in Rhythmbox with no skipping (recall -- this has been a constant problem up until now). I wonder if it is possible that in installing one of the other music player apps, some shared resource was also installed/updated which rhythmbox also uses, thereby clearing up the problem. Installing all the other music player apps is the only change I've made to my system recently. (If I uninstall these apps, is it likely to revert any/all shared modules, such that Rhythmbox would revert to using an older version of some shared object? Is this a likely avenue of investigation? If so, any suggestions on best way to proceed?) I will start using rhythmbox regularly to see if the problem comes back on its own. If not, then I may try a clean Jaunty install on a new partition and take a more systematic approach to determine under what conditions the bug occurs. (by the time I've finished adding this comment... Rhythmbox has now played for over 20 minutes withou my noticing a single skip).
(In reply to comment #0) > [later comment] > > Cross-fading NOT enabled. I never use cross-fading. Please try it for long enough to determine whether you experience the same problem. When crossfading is enabled, rhythmbox uses a completely different playback pipeline, so it would be useful to know if it has the same problem. > The skipping occurs on all songs -- at least I have not noticed particular > songs that do or do not skip. My collection is mostly mp3's, but there are > some flac, ogg, wmv... I do not know if the problem is specific to any file > type, but I doubt it. Please try to narrow it down. Also, do you have the gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly package installed? > *** OK, this is interesting, in compiling the above list, I just tested > Audacious for the first time. In past testing I have liked to go back and > replay a track in Rhythmbox just to verify that the skipping occurs again after > it played clean in another application. So I did this again (haven't used > Rhythmbox much since I tried all those others and settled on Banshee). Now I > have just played four tracks in Rhythmbox with no skipping (recall -- this has > been a constant problem up until now). I wonder if it is possible that in > installing one of the other music player apps, some shared resource was also > installed/updated which rhythmbox also uses, thereby clearing up the problem. That's pretty unlikely. Anyway, if you attach a copy of /var/log/dpkg.log that should provide enough information to see what related packages may have been installed. > Installing all the other music player apps is the only change I've made to my > system recently. (If I uninstall these apps, is it likely to revert any/all > shared modules, such that Rhythmbox would revert to using an older version of > some shared object? Is this a likely avenue of investigation? If so, any > suggestions on best way to proceed?) This depends on how you remove the packages. I don't tend to use ubuntu's package management tools, so I'm not sure how they will behave in this regard.
Created attachment 147581 [details] dpkg.log file Most recent dpkg.log file. Contains installs of most of the other music player apps.
Regarding dpkg.log just attached: This bug was a constant problem prior to installing other music players (all or most of which were installed on 11/08/09). As noted earlier, it seems possible that the bug has now disappeared. I will confirm/deny this after a few days of using rhythmbox.
This bug is also submitted (originally) to rhythmbox developers here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rhythmbox/+bug/480430 They seem to think it is a Gnome bug.
Just to clarify: no, we (the rhythmbox developers) don't use launchpad. You reported it to the ubuntu developers, who directed you here because it's not a bug in their packaging or in any patch they apply to rhythmbox in their packages.
Thanks for the clarification. I'm new to this -- I had it backwards as to which developers were where. Anyway, glad I'm now in the right place.
greylander, can you give us the output of apt-cache policy gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly thanks in advance.
I'm seeing something that looks pretty similar but on Fedora 12 (Rhythmbox 0.12.6). Happens with or without crossfading enabled, however I'm also noticing it in Banshee 1.6.1. I guess the equivalent of the apt-cache policy is: host:~ rpm -qi gstreamer-plugins-ugly-0.10.15-1.fc12.x86_64 Name : gstreamer-plugins-ugly Relocations: (not relocatable) Version : 0.10.15 Vendor: RPM Fusion Release : 1.fc12 Build Date: Fri 18 Jun 2010 19:54:26 WST Install Date: Fri 02 Jul 2010 14:17:33 WST Build Host: builder.wilsonet.com Group : Applications/Multimedia Source RPM: gstreamer-plugins-ugly-0.10.15-1.fc12.src.rpm Size : 887137 License: LGPLv2+ Signature : RSA/8, Sat 19 Jun 2010 14:46:59 WST, Key ID d556fe1316ca1a56 Packager : <http://nonfree.rpmfusion.org/> URL : http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/ Summary : GStreamer streaming media framework "ugly" plug-ins Description : GStreamer is a streaming media framework, based on graphs of elements which operate on media data. This package contains well-written plug-ins that can't be shipped in gstreamer-plugins-good because: - the license is not LGPL - the license of the library is not LGPL - there are possible licensing issues with the code.
Hm. Can you check whether you have fluendo codecs installed? Quite a few bugs turned out to be related to their MP3 decoder. You can probably launch totem or so with GST_DEBUG=*:5 and grep through the debug output for fluendo. Maybe checking ~/.gstreamer* does the trick, too.
any news for this reports?