Volume control and sound missing from Totem. All other video/music players work fine.

[Allan Bogh]

Binary package hint: totem

Totem worked fine before the upgrade to 9.04, with 8.10. I used a USB-connected Microsoft Sound device for rear sound (I know, don't laugh), but it wanted to control everything so I unplugged the USB part of it. I now only have the front sound hooked up. All other movie players work fine, Flash, MPlayer, VLC. Only Totem disables the volume button and there's no sound playing.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: totem 2.26.1-0ubuntu5
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: totem
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic x86_64

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

 * Is this reproducible?
 * If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?

 This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

[Allan Bogh (ajbogh)]

Without another system with similar hardware it's uncertain if it's a problem with drivers or with software. Since I've seen no other mention of a problem like this I would guess that it has something to do with a software setting, software bug, or driver (it could be PEBKAC).

Please see this bug for additional sound property details, since this may be related. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gstreamer0.10/+bug/367722

Here are the steps I took to discover this problem:

1) upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04
2) make sure only 1 speaker system is plugged into the front speaker (green) jack (not the one in the front of the desktop, if there's one there)
3) open hulu.com, youtube, VLC, or MPlayer on a video file to verify proper sound and volume
4) open same AVI video file with Totem. Notice volume button grayed out and no sound.

It seems as though Totem is not reading the sound settings properly, from my best guess. I can help more later by providing dmesg and other logs.

System details:

Sound - HDA ATI SB ALC1200 Analog (ALSA) onboard sound
Video - ATI HD3200 onboard
Processor - AMD Phenom x4

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you still get the issue?

[Allan Bogh (ajbogh)]

Yeah. I just switched the default playback device to VLC and MPlayer where available. VLC seems to work better than MPlayer to read malformed files, but I like the players to be self contained and not open up 2 windows, like the control window and the playback window. This is why Totem is nice, but if it doesn't play sound then it's pretty much useless.

I assure you that my sound works fine right now. Other players work fine with it, including MythTV, but only Totem refuses to work right. I've removed all speakers except a simple 2.1 speaker system connected to the green plug. I'm using HDA ATI SB (ALSA Mixer) in sound control since it gives the most controls. Front mic is disabled, everything else is active. Sound events sound playback is on the PulseAudio Sound Server. Music and Movies are on HDA ATI SB ALC1200 ANalog (ALSA). Audio conferencing is set to HDA ATI SB ALC1200 ANalog (ALSA) and ALSA. The default mixer track is set to Capture: HDA ATI SB ALC1200 Analog (PulseAudio).

I know some of these selections might not be correct, but the system works and the mixer shows the right stuff.

I'm still not sure what causes it, but Totem worked before the upgrade but now the sound button is unavailable (grayed out). No sounds play. Nothing else has changed on my system except the unplugging and rearranging of speaker systems, removing Microsoft's and using a standard one. I'm not sure if it matters but Microsoft's system did have a USB plug, so Totem might still be looking for that and ignoring any other options I give it.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Can you play sound using other gstreamer applications, rhythmbox for example? Does changing the sound options in gstreamer-properties makes a difference?

[Allan Bogh (ajbogh)]

I'll check later, unless I can figure out how to stream sound over TightVNC to my work computer. Thanks for the suggestions!

[Allan Bogh (ajbogh)]

Sorry, forgot to add that I uninstalled Movie Player and completely removed Movie Player (gstreamer), which is Totem, then reinstalled Totem hoping that the config files were just messed up, but no luck. I'll try your other suggestions though.

[Allan Bogh (ajbogh)]

Rhythmbox works fine and tests in gstreamer-properties using ALSA and PulseAudio output also work. It seems no other application has a problem except Totem. This also affects Firefox though since it uses Totem for playing mp3.

Maybe there's something else I can do? Wipe out Totem and reinstall it using current sound configuration? I know this sounds bad since it's like using a nuke to kill a mouse, but that's the mentality that Windows provides.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you get the same issue in a guest session?

[Allan Bogh (ajbogh)]

Amazing, no it doesn't happen in a guest session. So, that leads me to the question, how do I erase the configuration data for my user account's Totem setup so it'll rebuild it properly?

Thanks a lot for your kind support too.

[Allan Bogh (ajbogh)]

A little bit more information for you... I can play sound from Totem if I use "sudo totem /file/location" from the terminal. This tells me that it's definitely a user permission issue with my account. I checked which groups I'm a member of and here's the list:

> adm dialout cdrom audio video plugdev lpadmin netdev admin sambashare mythtv vboxusers

I have a test account with this list:

> test adm dialout fax cdrom floppy tape audio dip video plugdev scanner fuse

I made sure to check the little audio checkbox in the user properties window for my user account. I also logged out and back in once I did so. I know it's going to be something ridiculously simple now that I've narrowed down the search, but I'm still at a loss. Any help would be appreciated.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

ok so it wasn't a totem issue, rather a permissions on the account, closing the report, thanks.

[Allan Bogh (ajbogh)]

Wait. It's still a Totem issue because I don't know what to change on my account to make Totem play sound.

People in other forums have said to add the user account to the audio group and I already was a member of audio. I checked all the same permissions checkboxes in the account window. Nothing seems to be different, but Totem still has issues. If it was an audio group permission issue then I would have expected Flash, MPlayer, and VLC to adhere to the permission too.

What else could cause Totem to not play sound based on some user account setting, possibly permissions?

Don't close this yet please until I come back and say it's fixed.

[Allan Bogh (ajbogh)]

Changed back to New because it was incorrectly changed to Invalid.

[Allan Bogh (ajbogh)]

Bug still present.

Tested using sux with guest and root and both produce sound and video properly, although various errors occur during movie player startup (included below). Using sux with my own account produced the same lack of sound as starting totem normally.

Preparation:
Log in as user with Totem sound problems, start terminal, type 'sux', enter root password.

Test 1:
root@ajbogh-desktop:/home/ajbogh# sux ajbogh totem
/var/lib/python-support/python2.6/gdata/tlslite/utils/cryptomath.py:9: DeprecationWarning: the sha module is deprecated; use the hashlib module instead
  import sha

Result 1:
No Sound, proper video startup

Test 2:
root@ajbogh-desktop:/home/ajbogh# sux guest totem

** (totem:15456): WARNING **: Owner of /tmp/orbit-ajbogh is not the current user

** (totem:15456): WARNING **: Failed to connect to the session manager: None of the authentication protocols specified are supported

GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit,.........(this same message repeats for a while)

Result 2:
Totem starts with an error popup, "Unable to activate plugin Media Player Keys". This message is not related to the sound error and is ignored.

Sound and video both play normally.

[Allan Bogh (ajbogh)]

Please close this bug...

After doing several more searches I found this website (it's a RedHat support forum): https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=449268

A user on it had similar problems with sound, but only with certain video formats (Flash). This suggestion was made:

    Comment #4 From Bastien Nocera 2008-06-02 05:26:42 EDT -------

    Could you please try running gstreamer-properties, and setting the default output to "autodetect"?

I then realized that even though every other application on my computer was playing sound, Totem may be expecting a certain setting which is preventing it from playing. I also realized that with other user's sessions, like Root and Guest, that they have not had the sound properties modified.

I reset the sound properties to autodetect like Bastien Nocera recommended (I used gnome-sound-properties instead) and tested Totem again. The sound works fine now.

In my opinion, this is still a bug that Totem does not use the preferred sound output device as selected in gnome-sound-properties. It would benefit Totem to have a sound option which could override the sound properties as well. By doing so the sound on the computer could work with the preferred device while Totem could be configured for something completely different. A scenario would be if you have multiple sound output devices.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The totem issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

[Daniel Knittl-Frank (knittl)]

running gstreamer-properties and setting the devices to autodetect did not help in my case. what did help was to delete the file ~/.pulse-cooke and the directory ./~pulse.

after all it seems this problem was pulse related. (rhythmbox stopped working, so i really had to fix this bug. and totem works now too!)

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. A new version of totem is available in both Lucid and Maverick and we are wondering if this is still reproducible in any of those versions, May you please test and give us of feedback about it? Thanks in advance.

[Allan Bogh (ajbogh)]

Thank you for following up. This bug has not come up in Lucid.

My last comment included the instructions on how I fixed this:

        Please close this bug...

        After doing several more searches I found this website (it's a
        RedHat support
        forum): https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=449268

        A user on it had similar problems with sound, but only with
        certain video formats (Flash). This suggestion was made:

            Comment #4 From Bastien Nocera 2008-06-02 05:26:42 EDT
        -------

            Could you please try running gstreamer-properties, and
        setting the default output to "autodetect"?

        I then realized that even though every other application on my
        computer was playing sound, Totem may be expecting a certain
        setting which is preventing it from playing. I also realized
        that with other user's sessions, like Root and Guest, that they
        have not had the sound properties modified.

        I reset the sound properties to autodetect like Bastien Nocera
        recommended (I used gnome-sound-properties instead) and tested
        Totem again. The sound works fine now.

        In my opinion, this is still a bug that Totem does not use the
        preferred sound output device as selected in
        gnome-sound-properties. It would benefit Totem to have a sound
        option which could override the sound properties as well. By
        doing so the sound on the computer could work with the preferred
        device while Totem could be configured for something completely
        different. A scenario would be if you have multiple sound output
        devices.

Thank you,
Allan Bogh

On Fri, 2010-07-02 at 15:09 +0000, Pedro Villavicencio wrote:

> Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
> Ubuntu better. A new version of totem is available in both Lucid and
> Maverick and we are wondering if this is still reproducible in any of
> those versions, May you please test and give us of feedback about it?
> Thanks in advance.
>
> ** Changed in: totem (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

closing, thanks.