I'm using amarok (version 2.5.0) which uses the phonon-vlc backend (version 0.5.0). I also have pulseaudio (version 1.1) set up, but this issue was present before and after I installed pulseaudio, so it's probably irrelevant. These are arch linux packages. When I play flac files, amarok hangs for a fraction of a second, then resumes. I ran amarok --debug and whenever these events occur, error messages like the following appear in the log: [0x3e10348] main input error: ES_OUT_SET_(GROUP_)PCR is called too late (pts_delay increased to 300 ms) [0x3e10348] main input error: ES_OUT_RESET_PCR called or (a little bit later) [0x3e10348] main input error: ES_OUT_SET_(GROUP_)PCR is called too late (pts_delay increased to 1146 ms) [0x3e10348] main input error: ES_OUT_RESET_PCR called It seems to keep on increasing the pts_delay variable each time amarok hangs. I found references to the terms in caps in vlc's forums, which is why I've reported this bug against phonon-vlc, instead of amarok.
Please attach a phonon debug enabled log http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Debugging/Phonon ultimately you'd run amarok with --debug to also mix in Amaork's debug messages TIA
Of late, it's gotten worse. Now, the tempo/pitch of the song drops after the skip. Sounds like the artist got carried away, paused and then carried on singing with less conviction than before. Sad. So, just to confirm, I'd basically be setting the following environment variables and then look for skips while playing with amarok --debug, right: export PHONON_DEBUG=5 export PHONON_BACKEND_DEBUG=5 export PHONON_PULSEAUDIO_DEBUG=5 export PHONON_VLC_DEBUG=5 I left ouf PHONON_GST_DEBUG since I don't use gstreamer. Trouble is, the skips aren't predictable. But statistically, they happen several times in a playlist, so I can just look through the debug messages...
Simply write the output to a file, compress that and attach it. I do expect that the issue is either in VLC or PulseAudio, so the more data we have the easier it gets to actually pin-point what part causes the trouble.
And yes, first you set the envrionment variables and then you run amarok. something like export... export... .... amarok --nofork --debug &> amarok.log
Created attachment 72005 [details] Log of amarok skipping over a song I've attached the log prepared as directed. I exported the variables, started amarok and sent all the messages to the log file. I loaded the playlist with The Beatles' Rubber Soul and played the first three songs. I watched the log from another terminal with tail -f. The first two songs played fine, with no skips. The log mostly was about having to adjust the sampling rate to catch up. The third song skipped (you can grep for underflow or the pts_delay I talked about to locate this). I cleared the playlist, but let the song finish. The song skipped once more before finishing. Then, I exited the application by right-clicking on the system tray icon. The log is compressed as a tar.gz file. I also wanted to add that this is sporadic. and that there's nothing wrong with the file itself. I saw some log messages about flac detecting some error in the file. I played the same song again and it played without skipping. One more thing: these songs are stored on a mirrored raid array (/mnt/Media is basically /dev/md0). I have smartd set up to email me with any issues and they seem to be working fine. I used udisks --dump and the only two red highlight rows in the report for the two drives are reallocated_sector_count (3 and 7 sectors respectively) and airflow temperature (fail_past — happened when I hadn't cleaned out the filters of my desktop for a few months). Otherwise, they're in perfectly good condition.
Just a quick edit to my previous comment. It seems the flac file I had is indeed damaged (mplayer doesn't report it, but (c)vlc does). So, the second "skip" is actually that error and the log file is correct in that respect. So, only the first skip is legit and pertains to the bug I filed. Sorry for not checking this more thoroughly before submitting. :(
Thank you for the fast feedback.
Hi I got the same problem Amarok 2.5.0 KDE 4.8.2 but with Gstreamer/Phonon (mageia 2 x86-64) Playing mp3 no problem , some Flac (not everytime) load name & cover & timeline display 2 or 3 seconds and stop , it restart alone about 2 or 3 min after, on the same song,next song or next next song depends. run amarok --debug says no explicit fault (for me) flac songs made with Grip and tagged with easytag I got no problem on mageia 1 with amarok 2.5.0 compiled by me
I change for phonon-vlc and now it works (sometimes it crash) no stop on flac.
Thank you for the feedback. Could you please all test the version 0.6.0 and tell if this is still valid?
I think this bug can be marked closed. I've since dismantled by raid array and switched them to a normal hard disk setup and I don't see this skipping anymore, as of version 0.6.2. My best guess for why this was happening is that there was some sort of hiccup in reading the large flac files from a raid array. In that case, this may not even have been a phonon/vlc bug.