[vlc-devel] [PATCH] auhal setMute (refs #7329)

[Felix Paul Kühne]

Hello,

thanks for your detailed comments!

On 26.08.2012, at 20:03, "Rémi Denis-Courmont" <remi at remlab.net> wrote:

> We have already had the same discussion on the ML for VLC 2.0 volumes. 
> Practically all output back-ends with volumes save the volume internally. At 
> least PulseAudio, WASAPI do, and DirectSound does it on some versions of 
> Windows.
Interesting. I wasn't aware of that.

>> while a single "volume" config would be sufficient like in 2.0.
> 
> I don't know about "sufficient", but it was buggy. The UI control was often 
> unsynchronized, see Trac.
I wasn't aware of this either. I mean, there is the "volumechanged" callback for the interfaces, so there shouldn't be a synchronization issue and I've never seen one, possibly because there is only one audio output module available for my platform.

> Also different outputs use different scales. ALSA would explode the eardrums if 
> it used a volume saved by PulseAudio.
Sure, that makes perfect sense. This why we had the 0 to 512 scale in VLC and left it as an implementation detail to the respective output module to do something useful with it and to respect the scale.

>> For hardware volume outputs, there seems to be no way to set the volume if
>> no audio output is present. This sounds logical on a technical level, but
>> isn't obvious for the user.
> 
> It would be obvious if the volume control were greyed out.
This is not acceptable for me, since VLC would be the only media player on any platform I know, where you can only move the slider if an input is playing.

>> People like to change the volume prior to
>> starting a clip, so this value needs to go somewhere, so it is picked up
>> when the aout is created.
> 
> That would need a massive redesign of the audio output core/plugin interface, 
> so that the audio output plugin runs regardless without audio track. Even then 
> I am not sure it would work.
Really? Possibly, my imagination is too simple, but wouldn't it be enough to move the "volume" variable to some object which is available all the time, so one can read from and write to it like in the past?

> That is someone else's itch. I am not going to scratch it for the time being.
No problem.


Gosh, I sound like one of the everything-was-better-in-the-past-even-the-future-guys. Not the intention.


Best regards,

Felix