smplayer for Lubuntu 14.04 does not play sound files and does not play sound for video files

[Scott Cowles Jacobs]

I have used smplayer successfully for several years, under several [L]ubuntu versions.
Once in a while, it would not play a file, but I did not investigate the issue, as it was not many, and I had Gnome mplayer to play those (although for Lubuntu 13.10 gnome mplayer would sometimes (?) hang after playing a file).

Now that I have installed Lubuntu 14.04, SMplayer, will play video files, but no sound is played. Also, SMPlayer does not play audio files at all (window comes up, but time remains at 0:00 0:00).
If invoked from the terminal, no errors are displayed.

If the properties are displayed, there is no audio codec listed for either the video files or audio files.
If I then select a codec and hit "Apply" and then replay, nothing is different.

I DO have the correct audio codecs, as gnome mplayer plays videos with sound, and sound files just fine, and shows the audio codecs it uses.
{When I attempted to select the smplayer audio codec, I selected the one with the same name that gnome-mplayer was successful in using}

All audio and video files originate with YouTube, as downloaded by gnash, and (for audio files) converted by WinFF.

I have tested this with .ogg and .mp3 audio files, and whatever video files that gnash produces [gnome-mplayer shows "ffh264" for the video codec, and video type h264. File Properties says "MPEG-4 video (video/mp4)"] .

-Scott Jacobs
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scott@scott-AsusM2N68-AM-Plus:~$ uname -a
Linux scott-AsusM2N68-AM-Plus 3.13.0-24-generic-tuxonice #47~ppa1-Ubuntu SMP Tue May 6 14:40:05 UTC 2014 i686 athlon i686 GNU/Linux

scott@scott-AsusM2N68-AM-Plus:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty
[This is actually Lubuntu]

This is SMPlayer v. 14.3.0 running on Linux [14.3.0-1~trusty1]
MPlayer2 2.0-701-gd4c5b7f-2ubuntu2 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team

gnome-mplayer is version 1.0.8-2

[rvm (rvm)]

The mplayer log (options -> view logs) would be very useful to try to figure out where the problem is.

[Scott Cowles Jacobs (scott092707)]

I forgot - I meant to include the actual files that I was attempting to play.

The first one is a video. The video looks fine, but there is no sound.

This is the file that the video screenshot properties windows describe.

[Scott Cowles Jacobs (scott092707)]

Here is the audio file (.ogg) that smplayer does not play.

This is the file that the audio screenshot properties windows describe.

[Scott Cowles Jacobs (scott092707)]

Here is the first of two mplayer log files.

This first is for the video file.

[rvm (rvm)]

The problem is that you're forcing to use the vorbis codec for audio. Go to preferences -> general and uncheck the option "remember settings for all files" and try again.

[Scott Cowles Jacobs (scott092707)]

Actually, the problem was that the Output Driver was set to Pulse, when (according to "http://askubuntu.com/questions/106224/no-sound-after-lubuntu-installation" :

"Lubuntu unlike Ubuntu does not make use of Pulseaudio. Instead it uses Alsa for sound." the answer as of Feb 21 '12, anyway. There may be a quick way of finding out which my Lubuntu uses, but I was not able to find it.)

When I switched the Output Driver to Alsa from Pulse, I had sound.

Since I do not recall having any such problem with Lubuntu 13.10's smplayer, I must conclude that somehow someone accidentally set Lubuntu 14.04's default Output Driver to Pulse. (Either that, or for some reason Lubuntu 13.10 used Pulse, but used Alsa for 14.04...)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[vmc (vmclark)]

I had this same problem using lubuntu 14.04. Thanks for this info. Switching to Alsa fixed it for me.