Bug 489331

Summary:	Kasts hitches when unpausing after leaving a podcast paused for some time
Product:	[Applications] kasts	Reporter:	Andrew <andrewdbanks>
Component:	general	Assignee:	bart
Status:	RESOLVED UPSTREAM
Severity:	normal
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	23.08.5
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Kubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Andrew 2024-06-27 17:22:14 UTC

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SUMMARY

If I'm in the middle of a podcast and pause it for a while, like a half hour or an hour, when I unpause it, it will hitch a few times before it resumes properly.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Play a podcast for about 5 minutes. I typically listen to NextLander.
2. Pause the podcast and wait for a half hour to an hour. I'm not sure exactly how much time is required to reproduce, but let's say a significant length of time beyond a few minutes.
3. Unpause the podcast and continue listening.

OBSERVED RESULT

The podcast resumes from where it left off, but it will hitch with approximately two gaps of silence before it returns to normal.

EXPECTED RESULT

The podcast resumes smoothly from where it left off.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Windows:
macOS:
Linux/KDE Plasma: Kubuntu 24.04
(available in About System)
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.11
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.115.0
Qt Version: 5.15.13

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

On a previous installation of an older version of KDE, I was able to get around this by setting the playback backend to GStreamer rather than VLC, but there was no way to make that selection permanent, so I'd have to set it every time I booted the program, and on a fresh installation of Kubuntu 24.04, the option isn't there at all, perhaps because I'm missing a dependency somewhere. I believe this is from the Ubuntu/Kubuntu repositories, not Flatpak.

Comment 1 bart 2025-02-09 20:56:42 UTC

Sorry about not answering sooner.  I've been spending some time investigating this.
In the end, it turns out this is a problem with the upstream VLC library. We can't do anything to solve it on our end, so I'll close the bug here.  Feel free to open a bug against libVLC.

Switching to another backend is also not a good solution.  GStreamer has a bug that regularly makes the audio completely freeze with no way to recover except a full restart.  Compared to that, the 1 or 2 glitches at the start are quite insignificant.