[mythtv] [PATCH] Add help text to audio device selection

Isaac Richards ijr at po.cwru.edu
Fri Jun 25 21:32:33 EDT 2004


On Friday 25 June 2004 09:27 pm, Kevin Kuphal wrote:
> Isaac Richards wrote:
> >On Thursday 24 June 2004 09:25 pm, Kevin Kuphal wrote:
> >>This patch just adds some help text to the audio device selection.
> >>Specifically it notes the need to use ALSA:device to reference an ALSA
> >>device.  I had an issue today where for some reason with the newer alsa
> >>libraries installed I could no longer use /dev/adsp but instead had to
> >>use ALSA:spdif to reference my digital out but it took me some time to
> >>figure out that I had to use ALSA: (caps required) to get Myth to open
> >>the ALSA device properly.   This is unlike mplayer which many might be
> >>used to so I thought this help text might help people looking for the
> >>same setting.
> >
> >I've been keeping the ALSA stuff out of the settings help since it really
> >doesn't work properly.
>
> To be honest, after submitting this I started to see what you were
> saying, with some choppy audio that cut in and out.  I found my own
> problem that caused me to look at this in the first place and I'm back
> to using the ALSA OSS emulation with SPDIF out and it works fine.  I'd
> tend to agree with Kenneth that maybe if we had a strong warning in the
> text indicating it was experimental that would help rather than hiding
> the feature.

The main issue is that the ALSA playback support doesn't buffer internally _at 
all_.  A/V sync is going to be off, and you'll also get choppy audio as a 
result of this.  It wouldn't be terribly difficult to fix, just have to copy 
the OSS output class more closely than the current ALSA output method does.  
Probably be best to share the buffering code to a base class as well, instead 
of duplicating it so that other output classes don't make the same mistake.

> btw, have you had a chance to look at the patch titled "Clear bookmarks
> from watch recordings"?  It included that option as well as a cleanup of
> the watch recordings info menu.  Thanks for taking a look at this.

I'm trying to decide -- those menus are getting awfully full, and I really 
don't want to have to go to two pages of menus..  Might be a better solution, 
though, I dunno. 

Isaac


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