recording broke under JackLab 1.0 b1

[Dan MacDonald]

I have just tried running the latest svn version of Jokosher (revision 1433) under JackLab b1 but it failed to record anything.
I looked at the other 'jokosher won't record' bugs but I seemed to be getting a different error so I thought I'd start a new bug. I know my mic is working and mixer setting correct as I can record fine under audacity.

Here's what I do to p

1. Create a new project.
2. Add a vocal instrument (instrument is added and arm button is armed)
3. Hit record.
4. Push Stop a few seconds of making noise into mic

As soon as I push stop I get this error popping up in its own window:

--------------------------------------

Error loading file: None

Please make sure the file exists, and the appropriate plugin is installed.

Could not determine type of stream.

gsttypefindelement.c(737): gst_type_find_element_activate (): /pipeline0/decodebin1/typefind

---------------------------------

And the terminal dumps these messages:

--------------------------------

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/dan/src/jokosher/Jokosher/EventLaneViewer.py", line 395, in OnInstrumentSignal
    self.Update()
  File "/home/dan/src/jokosher/Jokosher/EventLaneViewer.py", line 156, in Update
    for widget in self.fixed.get_children():
SystemError: Objects/funcobject.c:128: bad argument to internal function

---------------------------

After dismissing the error window there is no wave form or recording that shows up in the vocal track and jokosher freezes.

I'm sorry if this exact bug has already been reported

[John Green (john-thegreens)]

As soon as you push the record button then you should see waveforms appear as you record sound. If this is not happening then we need to try and find why. The errors you report when you press stop are as a result of there being nothing there to save. So they are a consequence of a previous error and not the actual error.

Could you do the following please?

From the directory where you checked out svn Jokosher run

GST_DEBUG=3,python:5,gnl*:5 Jokosher/Jokosher -g > log 2>&1

Do what you did before and then quit jokosher and post the log (gzip it as it will probably be quite big :)

Many thanks

[Dan MacDonald (allcoms)]

Hi John!

Here's the error log you requested.

I really hope you can get Jokosher to run well under JackLab / OpenSUSE!

Thanks for your help!

Dan

[John Green (john-thegreens)]

I have recording fine working under opensuse 10.2 (albeit inside of vmware) so I don't really know why you are having trouble. It looks from the log that recording just isn't happening for some reason. You could try changing the file format you are recording to ogg and see if that makes a difference.

I'd also like you to check if you don't mind that gstreamer is working correctly on your system. Try typing each of these commands at the console in turn:

gst-launch-0.10 alsasrc ! audioconvert ! wavenc ! filesink location=test.wav

gst-launch-0.10 alsasrc ! audioconvert ! vorbisenc ! oggmux ! filesink location=test.ogg

The command might be gst-launch on some distros. This should begin recording so just whistle down your mic a bit and then press ctrl-c to quit. If it works then test.ogg or test.wav will be a recording. If they are empty files then something is screwed.

Let us know what happens.

[Dan MacDonald (allcoms)]

Hi John!

Yes, I realise that Jokosher records to ogg by default which is silly and needs to be fixed by 1.0. wav is the only sensible default for the file format. I had thought ogg might be causing the problem so I'd already tried changing to wav and recording but exactly the same thing happens- no wave is displayed and an error/crash when I push stop.

gstreamer seems to be working fine, well at least those two gst-launch commands you asked me to try both worked fine.

[Stuart Langridge (sil)]

Dan McDonald: one issue with wavs is that there's no such thing as "WAV". You cannot guarantee that all wav files are playable by applications; some apps can play some wav files and not others. Ogg Vorbis, on the other hand, isn't like that (at least theoretically). If your issue with Ogg Vorbis is that it's compressed, then that's reasonable, but I'd suggest that a better default might be FLAC than wav.

[Dan MacDonald (allcoms)]

Hi Stuart

Yes, I realise that WAV is just a container and not a specific codec but I have never had any problems opening a wav file under Linux or Windows, ever! I would suggest that Jokosher load and save wavs in exactly the same format as Audacity or Ardour does, whatever that may be.

Yes, my main issue with saving to oggs as default is that it is a lossy format. I know that FLAC is lossless but there is bound to be a significant increase in processing resources required for a machine to encode to flac(s) in realtime as well as decoding multiple other FLAC tracks and try to keep them all in sync, maybe some with FX too?

[John Green (john-thegreens)]

Dan

You know I said that recording worked for me in opensuse 10.2. Well it doesn't any more!! It was fine under gstreamer 0.10.12 but then I upgraded to 0.10.13 (which came out in June) and now it's broken. I get a tiny hint of an event box drawing appearing, no waveforms are drawn, the playhead doesn't move and when stop is pressed then I get the same errors you describe. These errors are because jokosher is trying to read back from the file saved which is empty because recording never started. There are seemingly no diagnostics from the recording failing at all.

Also, worryingly, I get the same behaviour with ubuntu gutsy which uses the same version of gstreamer. Can anyone else check they get the same problem with gstreamer 0.10.13 and it's not just me and Dan?

[John McHugh (mrmcq2u)]

Yes, having this same error with gutsy.... ran it from the terminal and it said that jackd was not installed so I installed it and then I got this error in the terminal

tretle@tretle-desktop:~$ jokosher-trunk/Jokosher/Jokosher

***MEMORY-WARNING***: Jokosher[12142]: GSlice: g_thread_init() must be called before all other GLib functions; memory corruption due to late invocation of g_thread_init() has been detected; this program is likely to crash, leak or unexpectedly abort soon...
/home/tretle/.themes/HumanStudio/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:216: Unable to locate image file in pixmap_path: "panel.png"
JACK tmpdir identified as [/dev/shm]

 I'm receiving the same error as before in the jokosher app itself. Exactly as described in the post above.

[Dan MacDonald (allcoms)]

I've just tried yesterdays svn jokosher under JackLab b2 using gstreamer 0.10.14 but now it doesn't even get as far as it did. It fails to open any existing projects and says

Unable to create new project

If you try to create a new project, and thats as far as you can get

[Dan MacDonald (allcoms)]

I'm now running JackLab RC2 with the very latest svn Jokosher (rev 1464). Last time I tried Joksher under JAD it wouldn't even create a new project, but now its back giving a very similar error to the one I reported originally. I follow the same steps as detailed in the first post and after pushing stop I get the error

Event bus error: Could not determine type of stream. gsttypefindelement.c(735): gst_type_find_element_activate (): /pipeline0/decodebin1/typefind

I'm also disappointed that jokosher is still defaulting to recording in ogg which I think is absolute madness as is an even more critical bug than the fact I can't record under JackLab/suse IMO. Please make the default recording format uncompressed, 16-bit 44.1Khz mono WAV please- it is the only sensible default.

[bastien (broques)]

Hello, I have the same error described here. Is there any issue now? I would be glad to know it, if there is any.
Cheers.

[Luis Carlos Cobo (luiscarlos)]

Same problem here with up to date Ubuntu Gutsy. The gstreamer commands suggested above work fine and produce perfectly playable files.

[Luis Carlos Cobo (luiscarlos)]

Not sure if it is related, but also when there are no instruments, I can set the tempo, activate the click track and hear the beats. After I add an instrument, when I press play nothing happens.