3 replies to this topic

[Parrallax]

Hi Guys,

I've recently installed XBMC on an Ubuntu 10.4 system, and sometimes when I attempt to play a video XBMC just freezes. I've placed a request on the XBMC forum but they are pretty poor at getting back to me about it. I've updated to the latest RC1, and the problem didn't go away. I can't get any reliable idea of what causes it to freeze and what doesn't. When it does freeze there's no option but to simply kill XBMC and start again, usually I give up with XBMC and go watch the video in MythTV, but XBMC is nicer and prettier and I'd prefer to have it working. Here's the debug log for it

http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/537705/

If anyone could help that would be great, this forum has always been very good to me.

[arkay]

Hi,

Looking at the log it doesn't really say much about any errors. If the last thing in the log was the cause then it looks like an audio related issue. I see your using Ubuntu so I'll give you a hint there. Ubuntu uses pulse audio on top of ALSA, this has been the cause of many an issue for all sound on Ubuntu. I would suggest searching the XBMC forums for "remove pulse", and then getting rid of it. It's possible this will fix the issue.

Alternately, use an OS that doesn't force unwanted libraries and processes on you so you don't have to deal with bloat faults

Does this happen with all media or only specific files?

Cheers,

Arkay.

[Parrallax]

It's a problem that exists with all files. It's definately an audio problem now. I uninstalled pulseaudio. MythTV still works fine. Now XBMC doesn't freeze up anymore, but instead it just continues along without any sound and with the message "coult not initialise audio device, check your audio settings" at the top of the screen. I've tried cycling through the audio devices. With other audio devices selected I don't get the error message, but I don't get any sound either.

[arkay]

Ok. Just a matter of finding your audio devices now then. At least it should be.

Firstly, how is the sound hooked up? What sound card?, are you using a receiver? Digital audio? etc etc.. The more you can tell me the easier it'll be to fix

Also, can you load up a terminal and post up the output of:

aplay -l
aplay -L

What does myth say it is using for audio in the settings/audio section of the setup?

One final gotcha, and I've seen this often with XBMC. The numbers on the keypad control the PCM volume in XBMC. Load it up, change to a sound device that doesn't complain, then play some music and mash around on 3 (vol up),6 (vol down) and 9 (mute on/off), on the remote. It could be that XBMC's volume is just set to 0... It's common for that to happen

Also make sure you run alsamixer in a terminal and check that all the volumes are turned up before running XBMC.

If you start a terminal before starting XBMC you can switch XBMC to windowed mode with the / or \ key (can't remember which), so you can then run alsamixer while XBMC is playing something to see if anything looks odd though I'd say changing the volume with

Cheers,

Arkay.