mplayer hangs with "-ao pulse" and "-ao alsa" if mythfrontend is running.

[rsay]

Binary package hint: mythtv

1. Go to the command line with mythtvfrontend stopped.
mplayer -ao pulse somefile.avi
Works

mplayer -ao alsa somefile.avi
Works

mplayer -ao oss somefile.avi
Works

2. Start mythfrontend (in a window if necessary), then from command line as before:
mplayer -ao pulse somefile.avi
Hangs

mplayer -ao alsa somefile.avi
Hangs

mplayer -ao oss somefile.avi
WORKS

So in summary, while running Ubuntu64 9.10, mplayer cannot play files with -ao alsa or -ao pulse if mythfrontend is running. This is regardless of whether mplayer is called from within the frontend or from the command line. Upgrading mplayer to svn did not resolve this problem, making me think it is more likely to be an audio bug. Running mplayer with -ao oss is a workaround for this bug.

Forum discussion is here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8409846#post8409846

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Nov 29 17:53:03 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: mythtv-frontend 0.21.0+fixes21383-0ubuntu0+mythbuntu4 [modified: usr/share/mythtv/info_menu.xml]
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-15.50-generic
SourcePackage: mythtv
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-15-generic x86_64

[MarcRandolph (mrand)]

Howdy, and thank you for helping to improve Ubuntu and Mythbuntu by opening this ticket. Could you please investigate the work-arounds presented in
https://bugs.launchpad.net/mythbuntu/+bug/460579 and report back if that changes your results at all?