Kdenlive under Ubuntu Intrepid (amd64 bit) and GNOME -> Choppy Audio / Stuttering problems

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Wed, 02/25/2009 - 10:40

ouija

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Kdenlive under Ubuntu Intrepid (amd64 bit) and GNOME -> Choppy Audio / Stuttering problems

I installed kdenlive and am still having issues with stuttering audio during playback. Rendering works great, and I love the layout of the application (very sony vegas-like!) so I would love to get it working 100%. I tried changing the output settings within kdenlive preferences, but only Automatic or ALSA has sound that works, and both are choppy on playback.

From my understanding, PulseAudio is the major player within Ubuntu Intrepid, however when I select this specifically there is no audio outputted at all.

I installed the pulse audio mixer and volume control, and noticed when I have the PulseAudio Playback Volume Meter loaded there is no output coming through as well (even when I set the preferences back to Automatic and the sound is working (but remember, choppy!) so I am curious as to how I can configure kdenlive to use PulseAudio, and is this maybe an issue related to the fact that kdenlive is running under Ubuntu Intrepid (and not Kubuntu)? Is there a way to configre kde based applications to use pulse audio under Ubuntu/Gnome?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Getting Kdenlive to work is basically the very last thing I'm looking for in a MICROSOFT-FREE computing environment!

Thanks!

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Wed, 02/25/2009 - 10:49

j-b-m

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Re: Kdenlive under Ubuntu Intrepid (amd64 bit) and GNOME -> ...

Kdenlive uses SDL for it's audio and video output. So I guess you should first try to install the package libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio

Then, to test you can open a terminal and type:

export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=pulse

After that, from the same terminal, try playing a clip with MLT's command line player:

inigo myvideo.mpg

If it works, then Kdenlive sound should work too.

Wed, 02/25/2009 - 18:39

(Reply to #2) #3

ouija

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Re: Kdenlive under Ubuntu Intrepid (amd64 bit) and GNOME -> ...

Thanks j-b-m!

This really improved the situation immensly. However, the audio still is a little choppy every now and again, but using this method is a huge improvement over what I was experienceing before! I wish it completly fixed the issue, but regardless I am very happy with the improvment.

I will look into this further and see if maybe there is a way to eliminate this issue alltogether, and will definitely post about it once I find a solution.

Thanks again!!

Wed, 02/25/2009 - 19:44

ouija

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Re: Kdenlive under Ubuntu Intrepid (amd64 bit) and GNOME -> ...

Okay I've managed to get the sound working now perfectly without any "choppyness" or "stuttering" -- and I love you for it!!

Basically what I did was take your advice but play with a little to see if there maybe was another configuration that would improve my situation.

What I found was that by installing "libsdl1.2debian-esd" instead of the "libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio" package, and then running the "export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=esd" command, the sound played perfectly using "inigo myvideo.mpg" as well as under Kdenlive.

I also belive this to be because I have the "pulseaudio-esound-compat" package installed, which provides the compatibility layer for esd through pulseaudio (of course I also have the "pulseaudio" package installed, along with all of the pulseaudio utilities (explained here: http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup) which allowed me to monitor the playback output through pulseaudio when testing this)

I am very excited to have Kdenlive working now without any audio issues so I can start using the program on a more frequent basis, and hopefully have it replace my current editing software completely so I no longer require the use of a Windows machine!

Hopefully this will help anyone else that is experiencing the same sort of issue.

Thanks again!!

Wed, 02/25/2009 - 21:55

(Reply to #4) #5

ouija

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Re: Kdenlive under Ubuntu Intrepid (amd64 bit) and GNOME -> ...

Well, now that my sound is working I've noticed that sometimes (most often) when playing back my timeline, the audio will tend to fall out of sync with the video. It's not terribly bad, maybe a millisecond or so, but I was curious if their might be a fix to this. When I render my project, the audio plays back fine (without sync issues) in any media player, so it's obviously just an issue with playing within Kdenlive itself.

I did read somewhere that it could be an issue with PAL settings within MLT or something, so I tried running the following in the terminal:

export MLT_NORMALISATION=NTSC

but that didn't seem to help any... . maybe a slight improvement, but the audio is still out of sync (or tends to fall out of sync eventually)

Also, there are no sync issues where running inigo from the termianl to playback a movie file.

I have the latest versions of FFMPEG, MLT and Kdenlive installed, and am running under Ubuntu Intrepid 64 bit.

Like I said, it's an issue I can live with for now, but are thier any suggestions or fixes that anyone might have? Let me know! Thanks!

Tue, 03/03/2009 - 02:01

Weevil

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Re: Kdenlive under Ubuntu Intrepid (amd64 bit) and GNOME -> ...

This post just rocked my world! Finally I can make some transitions without (too much) stuttering. I did find that I had to run the Configure Wizard again after changing SDL sound settings FYI.

Mon, 07/13/2009 - 11:09

ockels

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Re: Kdenlive under Ubuntu Intrepid (amd64 bit) and GNOME -> ...

I had the same problems under jaunty 32bit Gnome (KDE4.3 also installed, same choppyness).
Overal choppy sound while editting.
The debian USB image worked flawlessly, so i started digging and came to this thread.
Thanx guys, after executing

$sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian-esd

$export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=esd

The choppyness almost completely vanished!