Public bug reported: Binary package hint: mplayer
A number of people have <a href="http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=355545";> reported </a> that mp3 audio either fails to play, or plays with screeching instead of the correct audio with the most recent versions of mplayer in Feisty Fawn. I did some investigation, and found that I have two computer with different behaviour. My desktop, which I've upgraded to Feisty from Edgy, makes horrible screeching noises on playing mp3 audio. There was previously an error reported where mp3 audio didn't play at all due to mp3lib being disabled on compilation. This is not the same error, mp3lib is definitely compiled in, but it is not decoding correctly. To check this, I compiled from source via apt-get source and double-checked the /debian/rules file to make sure it was correct (it was). Additionally, I downloaded the source directly from www.mplayerhq.hu and it also fails with the same behavior. However, on my laptop (which was a fresh install of Feisty instead of an upgrade), the mplayer package decodes mp3 audio perfectly. Both computers are up to date Feisty installs, and both worked with previous versions of mplayer (the desktop works fine when I downgrade to a mplayer package I compiled a year ago). With my previous version of mplayer; however, it is using ffmpeg's mp3 decoder instead of mp3lib, so the results aren't necessarily comparable. Here is what I have done to try to narrow down the problem. 1. mplayer uses mp3lib and successfully plays mp3 audio on my laptop, which has an equivalent Feisty Fawn installation, except that it was installed fresh instead of through a dist-upgrade from Edgy as with my desktop (which plays screeching noises instead of the correct audio). This makes me suspect a config file from Edgy that was intended for use with the Edgy version of mplayer is overriding a correct more current config file from Feisty. Very likely, the difference is simply that the laptop *lacks* the config file, as mplayer will default to quite sane setting in the absence of instructions to the contrary. 2. Looking for a config file, I could not find codecs.conf anywhere (either in /etc/mplayer, in the list from dpkg -L mplayer, or in my ~/.mplayer directory). This strikes me as odd as I seem to remember it causing all kinds of heck many years ago -- but it could have been made unnecessary 3 years ago and I would never have noticed. 3. I don't see anything suspicious in the /etc/mplayer/ configuration files, nor in my own home directory (only mplayer.conf, and gui.conf type files, no codecs.conf that would be likely to mess with which codecs are used and how). 4. It's not the *binary* itself, because the same version of the mplayer package installed on both computers, with both having up-to-date versions of Feisty, don't behave the same way. 5. My next step will be to delete my ~/.mplayer directory to see if something in there is confusing the system. After that, I'll start looking at mp3lib to see if there could be a similar config file mixup for *that* software instead of mplayer. At the end of the day, I'd give it a 70% chance of being a problem with some legacy configuration file for mp3lib. ** Affects: mplayer (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: Unconfirmed -- [Feisty] mplayer fails to play mp3 audio correctly with mp3lib https://launchpad.net/bugs/86513 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
