Standard error should remain empty under normal circumstances

[era]

Binary package hint: totem

The standard error stream receives a steady trickle of error messages from Totem when viewing some videos. For example, LP bug #159130 contains a couple of example transcripts.

According to upstream comments to LP bug #15027 (at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=459293) the expectation of the gdm developers would be that standard error remains empty under most circumstances.

My suggestion would be to add a --verbose or --debug option switch and suppress non-critical warnings in the absence of this new option.

[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.

[era (era)]

On Feisty, I was able to consistently produce errors with the following files.

vnix$ wget http://www.codectest.com/codectest/streamingcodectest.zip
vnix$ unzip streamingcodectest.zip
vnix$ totem wheeliesorensonvideo2cbr.mov wheelie.wmv
** Message: don't know how to handle audio/x-gst-fourcc-Qclp, rate=(int)48000, channels=(int)1
** Message: Missing plugin: gstreamer.net|0.10|totem|audio/x-gst-fourcc-Qclp decoder|decoder-audio/x-gst-fourcc-Qclp (audio/x-gst-fourcc-Qclp decoder)
no application found
** Message: No installation candidate for missing plugins found.
DMO dll supports VO Optimizations 0 1
DMO dll might use previous sample when requested
Total Unfree 60 bytes cnt 1 [(nil),0]

The "Message:" warnings are from the first video, and the DMO stuff is from the second. They repeat every time I attempt to play these videos.

For the audio codec warning, it would perhaps be more appropriate to display a dialog box, since most users probably simply start Totem from the menu, and will never see the warnings in their .xsession-errors. For the DMO warnings, I don't know what they mean, but until they can be made understandable to an intermediate user, perhaps they should simply be suppressed.

To some extent, this is probably dependent on the installed codecs.

vnix$ ls /var/lib/dpkg/info/*codec*
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libavcodec0d.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libavcodec0d.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libavcodec0d.postinst
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libavcodec0d.postrm
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libavcodec0d.shlibs
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libxine-extracodecs.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libxine-extracodecs.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/w32codecs.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/w32codecs.md5sums

I believe I originally installed the lpf w32codecs under Dapper; I also have had ubuntu-commercial in my Apt sources.list.d at some point.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

There is an user dialog displayed, the message on the command line are technical details and useful to debug though, that's not really a bug. The dll lines would be a gstreamer0.10-pitfdll issue

[era (era)]

So should this bug be reassigned to gstreamer0.10-pitfdll or what?

I don't get a dialog box about the audio problem, just the warnings on standard error, and no sound.

[era (era)]

The point being, "useful to debug" is useful when you do want to debug, but pretty worthless if they end up where they will not be seen. Even if you notice a warning like that in your .xsession-errors (confession: I run tail -f on mine in a terminal at all times) it's hard to correlate the warning with any particular file you are viewing (or, when they are formatted like this, even with which program emitted them).

So, with --debug on the command line, you probably do want them, but when running Totem from Applications - Sound & Video - Totem Video Player or double-clicking on a file in Nautilus, probably you don't.

[era (era)]

I uploaded some typescripts to bug #159130 which also coincidentally illustrate this problem quite vividly. Some of the chatter is from the video codec installer buddy or whatever it's called, but anyway, feel free to have a look at those, too. I think they make the point that even though the plugins may be responsible for some of the verbosity, totem itself is certainly not without fault in this regard either.

[era (era)]

Incidentally, I installed jackd in the hope that those annoying error messages should go away, but now instead it prints "JACK tmpdir identified as [/dev/shm]" on the console for every file it plays.

[Basilio Kublik (sourcercito)]

Hi there
Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with the development version of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron?

Thanks in advance.

[era (era)]

I can try at some point, but if you have a Hardy system, the repro steps should be clear enough, I hope. (I wish I had a spare machine or a convenient VMware image for stuff like this, but alas, I haven't had time to set up anything like that.) Perhaps somebody who reads this can try it and follow up?

Just to repeat the repro steps: run totem on the command line, and see if it stays quiet. The streaming codecs test zip which is linked above would seem like a good test case.

I actually doubt that the Totem developers have done anything to fix this.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Thanks in advance.

[era (era)]

I am still able to repro on a Hardy box, yes.

I downloaded the codectest zip file. I removed the .rm and .swf files as well as wheeliesorensonvideo2cbr.mov (because I don't believe there are codecs for those; in any event, the codec installer buddy thingy can't suggest anything for those) and ran totem on the remaining files. This triggered a number of warnings immediately, and the codec buddy came up and suggested I install the "bad" codec set (gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad 0.10.6-5). I installed the suggested codec package, but the player was still unable to play the first file, and kept on invoking the codec installer again; however, it could no longer suggest any additional codecs to install. After restarting, I was able to play the media, however, still with warnings on standard error.

(The fact that you need to restart the player after installing a codec is a separate bug #159130.)

vnix$ wget http://www.codectest.com/codectest/streamingcodectest.zip

vnix$ unzip streamingcodectest.zip
Archive: streamingcodectest.zip
  inflating: videocomparisontest.txt
  inflating: wheelie.mov
  inflating: wheelie.mp4
  inflating: wheelie.rm
  inflating: wheelie.wmv
  inflating: wheelieAVCnero.mp4
  inflating: wheelieAVCsorenson.mp4
  inflating: wheelieMPEG2.mpg
  inflating: wheeliesorensonvideo2cbr.mov
  inflating: wheeliesorensonvideo3provbr.mov
  inflating: wheeliesparkpro.swf

vnix$ rm wheelie.rm wheeliesparkpro.swf wheeliesorensonvideo2cbr.mov

vnix$ totem w*
** Message: don't know how to handle audio/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)4, framed=(boolean)true, codec_data=(buffer)1290, rate=(int)32000, channels=(int)2
** Message: Missing plugin: gstreamer|0.10|totem|MPEG-4 AAC decoder|decoder-audio/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)4, framed=(boolean)true (MPEG-4 AAC decoder)

** (gnome-codec-install:21891): WARNING **: return value of custom widget handler was not a GtkWidget
/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/AppInstall/AppInstall.py:1255: GtkWarning: gtk_tree_model_sort_sort: assertion `tree_model_sort->default_sort_func != NULL' failed
  item.applications.set_default_sort_func(None)

(totem:21883): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: gst_object_unref: assertion `object != NULL' failed
** Message: Missing plugins installed. Updating plugin registry ...
** Message: Plugin registry updated, trying again.
** Message: don't know how to handle video/x-h264, codec_data=(buffer)014d0028ffe10013674d0028da05825b011000003e90000ea6094001000468ce3520, width=(int)352, height=(int)288, framerate=(fraction)30000/1001

(totem:21883): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: gst_object_unref: assertion `object != NULL' failed

(totem:21883): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: gst_object_unref: assertion `object != NULL' failed
** Message: Missing plugin: gstreamer|0.10|totem|H.264 decoder|decoder-video/x-h264 (H.264 decoder)

** (gnome-codec-install:22083): WARNING **: return value of custom widget handler was not a GtkWidget
additional codec installation declined

vnix$ totem w*
(totem:22199): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: gst_object_unref: assertion `object != NULL' failed

(totem:22199): GStreamer-CRIT...

[era (era)]

Forgot to add:

vnix$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=8.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=hardy
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 8.04.1"

This is an amd64 box. (Kudos for now having such excellent codec support on this platform btw!)

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

thanks for your report, could you try to reproduce the same with intrepid and see if it's still an issue there? thanks in advance.

[era (era)]

With all due respect, the repro steps continue to be trivial.

In the transcript below, I simply pressed "Cancel" when the "codec buddy" asked about installing missing codecs.

vnix$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=8.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=intrepid
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 8.10"

vnix$ uname -a
Linux nonesvch 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Tue Nov 4 19:33:06 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux

vnix$ apt-cache policy totem
totem:
  Installed: 2.24.3-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 2.24.3-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 2.24.3-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://fi.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.24.2-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://fi.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages

vnix$ cd /tmp

vnix$ wget http://www.codectest.com/codectest/streamingcodectest.zip
--2008-11-13 10:06:44-- http://www.codectest.com/codectest/streamingcodectest.zip
Resolving www.codectest.com... 65.98.62.118
Connecting to www.codectest.com|65.98.62.118|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 13953619 (13M) [application/x-zip-compressed]
Saving to: `streamingcodectest.zip'

100%[======================================>] 13,953,619 167K/s in 2m 43s

2008-11-13 10:09:33 (83.6 KB/s) - `streamingcodectest.zip' saved [13953619/13953619]

vnix$ mkdir codectest

vnix$ cd codectest

vnix$ unzip ../streamingcodectest.zip
Archive: ../streamingcodectest.zip
  inflating: videocomparisontest.txt
  inflating: wheelie.mov
  inflating: wheelie.mp4
  inflating: wheelie.rm
  inflating: wheelie.wmv
  inflating: wheelieAVCnero.mp4
  inflating: wheelieAVCsorenson.mp4
  inflating: wheelieMPEG2.mpg
  inflating: wheeliesorensonvideo2cbr.mov
  inflating: wheeliesorensonvideo3provbr.mov
  inflating: wheeliesparkpro.swf

vnix$ rm wheelie.rm wheeliesparkpro.swf wheeliesorensonvideo2cbr.mov

vnix$ totem w*
** (totem:23953): DEBUG: Init of Python module
** (totem:23953): DEBUG: Registering Python plugin instance: YouTube+TotemPythonPlugin
** (totem:23953): DEBUG: Creating object of type YouTube+TotemPythonPlugin
** (totem:23953): DEBUG: Creating Python plugin instance
** (totem:23953): DEBUG: Init of Python module
** (totem:23953): DEBUG: Registering Python plugin instance: BBCViewer+TotemPythonPlugin
** (totem:23953): DEBUG: Creating object of type BBCViewer+TotemPythonPlugin
** (totem:23953): DEBUG: Creating Python plugin instance
** Message: don't know how to handle video/x-h264, codec_data=(buffer)014d0028ffe10013674d0028da05825b011000003e90000ea6094001000468ce3520, width=(int)352, height=(int)288, framerate=(fraction)30000/1001
** Message: don't know how to handle audio/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)4, framed=(boolean)true, codec_data=(buffer)1290, rate=(int)32000, channels=(int)2
** Message: Error: You do not have a decoder installed to handle this file. You might need to install the necessary plugins.
gstplaybasebin.c(2307): prepare_output (): /GstPlayBin:play

** Message: Missing plugin: gstreamer|0.10|totem|MPEG-4 AAC decoder|decoder-audio/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)4, framed=(boolean)true (MPEG-4 AAC decoder)
** Message: Missing plugin...

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

This package has been removed from Ubuntu. Closing all related bugs.