Problems with vlc 0.2.80

[Bill Piety]

I'm also a KDE user, but I've selected to use 'custom sound device',
alsa. Under KDE 2.1.x (RH7.1, 4.0.3, 900hz T-bird, Nvidia TNT2) the only
difference in playback between Win2K & Linux is that dialogue sound is
weaker than background music etc. Good coordination with audio. I have
some performace degradation under Ximian gnome for sound only, and with
certain DVD's only. Video output for 'Proof of Life' was stunning last
night. Congrats to all with the development, vlc 0.2.80-1 (SDL output
1.2.1-1)

On 30 Jun 2001 18:41:43 +0200, Michael Flohr wrote:
> Hi Gildas,
> 
> I got the CVS version from Friday, 29.07.2001.
> It compiled without any problems and the xvideo plugin
> works now perfect! I did not encounter any strange
> crashes anymore. If you still want me to run it through
> gdb, let me know.
> 
> Another small issue is sound: Is it possible that
> changing the channel (i.e. the language) opens
> a new thread (or fifo?) without necessarily closing down
> the old one before? Often enough, I then don't get
> any sound at all. Also, the console messages of the
> system tell me that vlc then tries to load kernel modules
>     sound-slot-X
>     sound-service-X-3
> where X=1,2,3,
> which on my system do not exist.
> 
> Moreover, as a KDE user I always
> have the problem that the sound server of KDE, the
> "artsd", blocks the sound device. Killing it before using
> vlc is annoying and might confuse other sound applications.
> So, I hacked the code a little to get around this problem.
> To make this hack useful for general users, one certainly
> should introduce a compile option in configure, but maybe
> it is too dirty anyway:
> 
> In "./src/audio_output/aout_ext-dec.c" I only changed the following:
> Introduce a new variable after line 52:
>     int arts_status;
> Within the first if statement, before line 67, I introduced the lines:
>     while((arts_status = system("artsshell suspend\n")) != 0)
>     {
>         usleep(1000);
>     }
> Sorry that I give that in this unprofessional way. But maybe,
> this might be helpful for other KDE useres as well. Upto release
> vlc-0.2.73, one could simply say "artsshell suspend; vlc ..." since
> vlc immediately opened the sound device and blocked it. In the
> new release, vlc does open the sound device only when needed,
> such that the "artsd" might again have grabbed the sound device
> in the meantime (e.g. because you have sounds for window manager
> actions enabled such as a window popping up, or changing the
> focus to another window). Since the sound device might still be
> buzzy (then artsshell returns "2"), I use the while loop. At least
> for me, it works well.
> 
> Best wishes
> Michael
> 
> 
>