With the "pulse" device, the VLC ALSA output fails most of the time for me. It just stays always late, typically by a large fraction of one audio "packet" (8192 samples). The result is undecipherable continuous stutter. I get this with both AC97 and HDA devices. The VLC ALSA output was designed many years ago with hardware in mind. It queues the next audio packet while the previous one is (supposed to) be played. This does not give much margin for one extra software buffer, like PulseAudio.
As for the PulseAudio output, it worked mostly like the ALSA one up to VLC version 1.1.9 (and was also leaking memory like hell in some cases as we know). Lip synchronization was a side effect of the small duration of the audio buffer. In version 1.1.10, there really is no synchronization. Audio is fed as it comes, PulseAudio is told what the expected buffer fill level is. That is currently half a second. So long as the audio decoding and filtering is fast, and the system and audio clocks do not drift, this provides poor but still passable synchronization. If decoding is slow, or if for some reason the system clock and the audio timing drift, desynchronization can unfortunately reach several hundreds of milliseconds. At this point in time, there are no audio output plugins that fill all of the requirements for quality playback through PulseAudio: (1) long enough buffers to avoid stutter, (2) no outrageous bugs like bug #743323, (3) functional synchronization. The ALSA plugin fails (1), as do SDL and PortAudio (if it comes to that). The old PulseAudio plugin kind fails (1) and totally fails (2). The new PulseAudio plugin fails (3). Pick your evil... or suspend PulseAudio while using VLC. <rant>Bluntly, I am rather disappointed at the complete lack of consideration and help from distributions like Ubuntu for the VLC team (and possibly anything other than gstreamer) w.r.t. to PulseAudio integration in how many years since they decided to introduce it by default.</rant> We will be very lucky if we get it to FINALLY work in VLC 1.2.0 WITHOUT Ubuntu's help. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/805807 Title: Sound is not synchronised with the video To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+bug/805807/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
