Multimedia that *just works*, pretty please!

[jd1008]

Nothing beats SMPLAYER in speed, and reliability.
Have been using it in xxxbsd, linux and windows.


On 09/20/2015 07:37 AM, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> Please reply only to one list if you reply – even though I think its high time
> that people work together for a grander, unified view on how to handle
> multimedia within Linux. As I am not subscribe to alsa-devel, please Cc me in
> case you reply to this list.
>
> And yes, this is a rant. But it based a huge lot of real life experiences with
> multimedia on Linux just not working right for me and various machines I use
> for myself or installed for others.
>
> While I appreciate that it may just work okay for quite some people, I also
> think no amount of denial will make the cases where it currently breaks like
> it breaks for me on various machines go away. Am I the only one? I don´t know,
> but I do not think so.
>
>
>
> Hi!
>
> I have a dream, a simple dream:
>
> Multimedia that *just works*.
>
>
> That means:
>
> - music playing: I have a play list, select a song and when I press play, it
> just starts playing. *All of the times*. Like my Kenwood CD player. It works.
> *All of the time*.
>
> - when I play a music in any app, it always plays with the same settings on
> the same device through the same backend.
>
> - in the rare event there is a real user error, it tells me so, in the GUI.
>     - specifically it doesn´t just not start playing like Amarok in Debian Sid
> with phonon gstreamer backend *without* any visible user feedback whatsoever.
> no matter whether without or with pulseaudio.
>
> - also it does not break any third party apps
>     - specifically it doesn´t make the sound stutter in PlaneShift game which
> uses OpenAL like installing Pulseaudio does¹
>
> - and most importantly: It is simple enough that it gives me a fair chance to
> find the cause of the error in case there is one.
>     - It is even simple enough that it doesn´t need hours over hours on trying
> a gazillion different options to combine various parts of the audio stack to
> make audio playback work in case after some upgrade it doesn´t anymore.
>
> - It works with USB sound speakers *out of the box*.
>
> - Playback is *stutter* free. All of the times. The Amiga was able to do that
> 20 years ago and so can Linux.
>
>
> Multimedia my Plasma 5 Linux desktop for me isn´t that. And it wasn´t that in
> KDE SC 4 times as well.
>
> Multimedia in my Plasma 5 setups is embarrassing. Friends even joke at me
> whenever we watch a video here – and they have a point to make. When newest
> VLC selects a dsnoop device from the USB front speaker without *any* apparent
> reason and *against* being told to use a specific device in its settings. And
> I have to tell it to use the right device every single time I start the app.
> Or at times where the machine didn´t play the audio at all. While at the same
> time *none* of the other players work out of the box. Not Dragon Player, not
> Kaffeine, insert your favorite mplayer fork, not Totem player, not anything.
> So what I get with VLC here is still the *best* experience.
>
> And with Amarok? I am seriously fed up with fixing up audio playback every now
> it then when it breaks for no apparent reason to me. Somehow I always get it
> to work, well except today, it still doesn´t work on one machine, and I have
> no idea why. And seriously – isn´t this supposed to be as simple as pressing
> "play" on my CD player or my the Rockbox based Sansa e260?
>
>
> Is it just me?
>
> I repeatedly get the impression that multimedia under Linux is a total,
> complete, utter mess. A complete disaster. And I get this impression out of
> real life experiences I make.
>
> Once I try something more than a simple I play audio within one app from the
> internal speakers it has a tendency to break down.
>
> Basically I get the impression that it is an accident when it works aside you
> staying in a simple one app with internal speaker scenario and even then it
> can break as I found out today.
>
>
>
> I think its not just one single component causing this. I relate this to the
> complete Linux audio stack.
>
> I dream of multimedia developers of all kinds come together to clean up the
> mess. I´d even be willing to attend and test all kinds of combinations, if,
> please, if, the amount of possible combinations to use to *just* play audio is
> reduced to an amount of combinations that anyone with some sanity left can
> work with.
>
>
> I am so seriously fed up with the state of multimedia in my Plasma desktop on
> Linux.
>
> In my experience currently it is a complete disaster.
>
> I just want to shout "keep it simple!" at it all the time.
>
>
> Thank you for reading this far and please note that I do not mean this as a
> personal attack. I know its no one´s fault. I know you pour your labor of love
> into the parts of the multimedia stack you care about. I appreciate and honor
> that.
>
> I know I am using Debian Sid, I know its Phonon Qt4 => Qt5 transition, I know
> its only a bit after G++ ABI transition. But I have seen issues often enough
> on stable releases of Debian. What I described here is just the tip of the
> iceberg.
>
> I switched the box that made so much trouble today to Pulseaudio now. Playback
> in Amarok still doesn´t work with Phonon gstreamer backend. Amarok currently
> crashes with Phonon VLC backend. I may try to compile the Qt5 version of
> Amarok to see whether it behaves better. At least Clementine plays. So its
> Clementine for now.
>
> My main machine is still without Pulseaudio and will be, until I know how to
> fix stuttering audio playback in PlaneShift. I play this game regularily and I
> am just not going to install anything that breaks it. And at least here Amarok
> starts with VLC phonon backend.
>
>
> I am willing to provide debug output and help testing to make things work, but
> I definately need guidance as I have no idea where to look for errors. Is it
> Phonon? Is it Pulseaudio? Is it PlaneShift game? Is it ALSA? Is it VLC? Is it
> Gstreamer? Frankly, I have no idea anymore. And I think thats not due to a
> lack of intelligence.
>
>
>
> ¹ [Bug 85445] New: PlaneShift with OpenAL sound  stutters: PulseAudio returned
> minreq > tlength/2; expect break up
>
> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85445
>
> I seriously consider reporting this with PlaneShift developers as well. Maybe
> out of whats in there they can fix something within the game, but as it works
> with ALSA just fine… Please don´t just break userspace apps that work fine
> with ALSA.
>
> Ciao,