Open Sound System

Hi,
I'd like to ask if it would be possible to add Support for Pepper-Flash or at least hmtl5 video sound output?
The current situation makes it a pain to work with my fav browser Chromium: The non-pepper flash is really buggy produces glitches etc. The pepper flash version works really nice but it seems OSS can't give sound output for this. Support for HTMA5 vids like on youtube would maybe be an alternative at least, but even that doesn't work.
There is a bugreport on the chromium bugtracker which claim it to be OSSv4 fault, not Chromium's:
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issu ... ?id=158478
Maybe also of interest https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issu ... l?id=19470

Can anything be done about it? Thanks in advance.



best regards
nuc

nuc wrote:The pepper flash version works really nice

What is nice in this crap?
Have you really tried it? Or you simply believe that it is nice?
This crap is easy to install on Ubuntu/Arch Linux, but it seems to be useless.

You may better try Opera.

[How To] Join the HTML5 Video Trial on YouTube
http://www.omgchrome.com/youtube-html5/
How To View HTML5 Videos on YouTube (Finding WebM Videos on YouTube)
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/html5/tutori ... CyBQ806420

igorzwx wrote:

nuc wrote:The pepper flash version works really nice

What is nice in this crap?
This crap is easy to install on Ubuntu/Arch Linux, but it seems to be useless.

By nice I mean it works. I don't encounter problems with it. I know Flash sucks. But if it works I don't consider it useless. Standard Flashplayer doesn't work correctly on Chromium and I don't expect it to fixed.

[How To] Join the HTML5 Video Trial on YouTube
http://www.omgchrome.com/youtube-html5/
How To View HTML5 Videos on YouTube (Finding WebM Videos on YouTube)
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/html5/tutori ... CyBQ806420

This I already know. However I have no sound output neither from Firefox nor Chromium from HTML5 vids. So it's the browsers fault?
Doesn't ff have native OSS sound? Does Opera? I like Opera actually.

Thx for the answer.

nuc wrote: However I have no sound output neither from Firefox nor Chromium from HTML5 vids. So it's the browsers fault?
Doesn't ff have native OSS sound? Does Opera? I like Opera actually.

HTML5 seems to work with Opera and OSS4 "out of the box", although it does not perform well on very old computers (of 2003).

nuc wrote:There is a bugreport on the chromium bugtracker which claim it to be OSSv4 fault, not Chromium's:
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issu ... ?id=158478

If you look at the status of that bug you will see that it's already fixed. You need to have Chrome / Chromium from the stable 26 series (the bug appeared atleast for me with 24 and 25 series).

Besides that you need to have ALSA emulation because Chrome / Chromium uses that on Linux.

ALSA Emulation Open Sound System Wiki
Arch Wiki ALSA Emulation

When editing the .asoundrc (which is a hidden file in your /home directory) use instructions from Arch Wiki. I've found out that they work better than those on OSS Wiki.

Matti wrote:

nuc wrote:There is a bugreport on the chromium bugtracker which claim it to be OSSv4 fault, not Chromium's:
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issu ... ?id=158478

If you look at the status of that bug you will see that it's already fixed. You need to have Chrome / Chromium from the stable 26 series (the bug appeared atleast for me with 24 and 25 series).

Besides that you need to have ALSA emulation because Chrome / Chromium uses that on Linux.

ALSA Emulation Open Sound System Wiki
Arch Wiki ALSA Emulation

When editing the .asoundrc (which is a hidden file in your /home directory) use instructions from Arch Wiki. I've found out that they work better than those on OSS Wiki.

ALSA emulation is a kind of "audio terrorist". It kills sound in Audacity, for example. And also sound distortion, latency, processor load, etc.
If you are not as deaf as Google developers, you may not like that crap.

Opera works with OSS4 and HTML5 or Flash without ALSA emulation.
It is even usable (to a certain extent) on really old computers (of 2003):
Opera Flash - about 65% CPU
Opera HTML5 - about 60% CPU
Opera HTML5/WebM - about 20% CPU

Hi Matti and thx for your help I didn't know ALSA emulation is fixed. However I agree to igorzwx that ALSA emulation is not a proper solution.

Anyways I installed Opera and yes sound works for HTML5 vids . I think it's because Opera uses gstreamer. Why do Firefox and Chrome use their own implementation at all I thought this is not the recommended way anymore?

nuc wrote:ALSA emulation is not a proper solution.

This seems to be a kind of "understatement" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understatement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_be_an_Alien
http://f2.org/humour/howalien.html#Soul

"ALSA emulation" is rather a perfect example of absolute stupidity.

It might be obvious that ALSA performs better than ALSA emulation.
You can easily switch from OSS4 to ALSA (and from ALSA to OSS4) in a few seconds through the help of a simple script (without reboot and without reinstallation of anything).
WARNING: The OSS4 developers do not like such scripts for understandable reasons. The same is true for ALSA developers.

If you feel very experimental, you may try to load/unload ALSA

Code: Select all

$ apt-cache search alsa-base
alsa-base - ALSA driver configuration files
$ sudo apt-get install alsa-base
$ dpkg --search /sbin/alsa
alsa-base: /sbin/alsa
$ whereis alsa
alsa: /sbin/alsa /usr/share/alsa
$ alsa --help
Usage: /sbin/alsa {unload|reload|force-unload|force-reload|suspend|resume}
[EXAMPLE]:
$ sudo alsa unload
$ lsmod | grep snd

Do not forget to remove sound applet from panel, for it may prevent unloading ALSA modules.
See also: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5204
The outdated manual with scripts is here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3981

To unload OSS4, you can use these commands:

Code: Select all

$ sudo /usr/lib/oss/scripts/killprocs.sh
$ sudo soundoff

nuc wrote: I installed Opera and yes sound works for HTML5 vids . I think it's because Opera uses gstreamer.

Opera does not use gstreamer.
This can be verified with a simple test:

Code: Select all

$ sudo mv libgstoss4audio.so libgstoss4audio.so-copy2

This command disables the OSS4 gstreamer plugin, but sound still works with Opera/HTML5 and OSS4.

It seems that Opera has its own implementation of OSS4 like many other multi-media applications: MPlayer, DeadBeef, Audacious, etc. It seems to be the best way of doing things on Linux. Petrov's OSS4 plugin for DeadBeef is a good example.

nuc wrote: Why do Firefox and Chrome ...

Firefox and Chrome have been always buggy. The problem is that semi-deaf PulseALSA developers can only produce "very advanced open-source crap" and nothing more.

igorzwx wrote:Opera does not use gstreamer.
This can be verified with a simple test:

Code: Select all

$ sudo mv libgstoss4audio.so libgstoss4audio.so-copy2

This command disables the OSS4 gstreamer plugin, but sound still works with Opera/HTML5 and OSS4.

Hm, this actually surprises me because look at the opt-deps in Arch repo for Opera https://www.archlinux.org/packages/comm ... _64/opera/ :

gstreamer0.10-base-plugins (optional) - HTML5 Video support
gstreamer0.10-good (optional) - HTML5 Video support

Maybe it's being used only for video but not for sound?

nuc wrote:

igorzwx wrote:Opera does not use gstreamer.
This can be verified with a simple test:

Code: Select all

$ sudo mv libgstoss4audio.so libgstoss4audio.so-copy2

This command disables the OSS4 gstreamer plugin, but sound still works with Opera/HTML5 and OSS4.

Hm, this actually surprises me because look at the opt-deps in Arch repo for Opera https://www.archlinux.org/packages/comm ... _64/opera/ :

gstreamer0.10-base-plugins (optional) - HTML5 Video support
gstreamer0.10-good (optional) - HTML5 Video support

Maybe it's being used only for video but not for sound?

OSS4 sound playback in Opera/HTML5 does not depend on gstreamer. This was proved with the clear-cut test.
But video playback may depend on gstreamer (if Opera developers are really stupid).

On Ubuntu/Linux Mint, Opera depends on gstreamer0.10-plugins-good

Code: Select all

$ apt-cache show opera
Package: opera
Version: 12.14.1738-1linuxmint
Architecture: i386
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.8), libfontconfig1, libfreetype6 (>= 2.2.1), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.16.0), libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0 (>= 0.10.16), libgstreamer0.10-0 (>= 0.10.15), libice6, libsm6, libstdc++6 (>= 4.1.1), libx11-6, libxext6, libxml2 (>= 2.6.27), libxrender1, gstreamer0.10-plugins-good, debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, fonts-liberation | ttf-liberation | ttf-mscorefonts-installer

You may try to remove "gstreamer0.10-good" (if it is an optional dependency on Arch Linux, it may not cause problems):

Code: Select all

$ sudo pacman -Rdd gstreamer0.10-good

Then start opera from terminal and try to play HTML5 videos.

Ok I followed your advice and removed it. Opera still plays the HTML5 video but VERY sluggish and there is no sound output. I started Opera from terminal but it seems there didn't appear any additional warnings.

EDIT: Ossxmix shows me this when having gstreamer0.10-good installed and I play a HTML5 video:
http://www.abload.de/img/oss-opera09bky.png
When unused it's name is PCM8 instead of multique.
When the gstreamer0.10-good is not installed it doesn't show any movement.

nuc wrote:Ok I followed your advice and removed it. Opera still plays the HTML5 video but VERY sluggish and there is no sound output. I started Opera from terminal but it seems there didn't appear any additional warnings.

It may depend on how Arch developers compiled Opera for Arch Linux.

You may reinstall "gstreamer0.10-good" and try to reproduce my test with "libgstoss4audio":

Example:

Code: Select all

$ cd /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10
$ ls | grep libgstoss4audio
$ sudo mv libgstoss4audio.so libgstoss4audio.so-copy2

Thx igorwxy it is a pleasure working with you. I renamed libgstoss4audio.so and sound works and the video isn't sluggish, however it's a bit buggy (but less than before) EDIT: sorry it's the same actually. The correct path is /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10 btw.

Now I'm confused.. without libgstoss4audio.so it shouldn't work right?

Offtopic: Just out of curiosity, does gstreamer actually add additional latency?

nuc wrote:Thx igorwxy it is a pleasure working with you. I renamed libgstoss4audio.so and sound works and the video isn't sluggish, however it's a bit buggy (but less than before) EDIT: sorry it's the same actually. The correct path is /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10 btw.

Now I'm confused.. without libgstoss4audio.so it shouldn't work right?

The path is different in Arch and Ubuntu.
Notice that Ubuntu 12.10 (Linux Mint 14) uses a new gstreamer (gstreamer1.0).

I made another experiment on Linux Mint 13 (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS):
1. Removed libgstoss4audio.so
2. Started Totem with mp3.

Totem did play mp3 (without libgstoss4audio.so) for a few seconds. Then it collapsed with "Segmentation fault (core dumped)".

With libgstoss4audio.so, Totem seems to play mp3 without problems.
This particular "libgstoss4audio.so" is not a "native thing" here. See: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5211

nuc wrote:Now I'm confused.. without libgstoss4audio.so it shouldn't work right?

Yes. It shouldn't.
This seems to mean that Opera is also crap. That is why, perhaps, it is "closed source".
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity

Perhaps, Cesium may explain something about Opera, gstreamer, and OSS4.

Now I'm even more confused with your totem example. Opera also makes no sense to me.

Why do programs need gstreamer/libgstoss4audio.so without needing it? I try hard really, but more and more I'm loosing track of this audio mess on Linux...