I don't have a problem with vlc but I was having a problem with UrbanTerror and found 2 important SDL libraries not installed by default. These are my installed vlc libs vlc vlc-nox vlc-data vlc-plugin-pulse libvlccore2 libvlc2 libvcdinfo0 There is also vlc-plugin-sdl that I DO NOT HAVE INSTALLED and I'm running fine without it. Here is my report on how I fixed sound for UrbanTerror: I was told..."Try and install libsdl1.2-debian-pulse so that sdl uses pulseaudio directly, and see if that helps." I actually had libsdl1.2-debian-pulse installed. changing it to alsa as someone else recommended just killed my sound. pulseaudio is just the sound server not a driver. pulse actually controls alsa from what I've read on other threads. libsdl-sound1.2 was missing along with libsdl1.2debian which is the SIMPLE DIRECTMEDIA LAYER. SOLVED I tried going all alsa found out pulse is only a server between alsa and the application running alsa. screwed it all up and had to re-install. running compiz the game was quiet but I could play a few minutes using metacity...still crashed... I tried debian and slackware...no luck I installed Ultimate Edition 2.5...everything else working fine...back to no sound in Urban Terror. no metacity to switch to Ultimate Edition might have given me a better repository or other libraries for success, anyway this is what I have going that makes UT work perfect. very perfect... Made sure adobe 10 flashplayer that was lagging gnome and firefox wasn't the problem by leaving it out of this install. I had to install the alsa mixer gui to get my mono base channel working on the soundcard but Urban Terror still kept crashing. I found out that if your sound crashes instead of trying to back out of UT and locking up your system forcing a restart just hit alt+tab and it will minimize the window and you can close the app with a right-click close I tried switching to Libsdl-debian-alsa and I had absolutely no sound I had to open pulse audio preferences and select the analog stereo duplex option, the digital feed was not working with my sigmatel 97 soundcard. I tried switching to Libsdl-debian-all and that still worked for everything else but not urban terror. I noticed that Libsdldebian1.2 (Simple Directmedia Layer) was NOT installed by default so i installed it. No change yet... I switched back to ubuntu 9.10 default Libsdl-debial-pulseaudio from the Libsdl-debian-all everyone was reccomending Urban Terror works perfect, No crash, no lag and I have compiz desktop cube active and am running under the ubuntu drivers so it was never an ati driver problem strictly audio. some people have said UT ran better under metacity and it did for me but still kept crashing the soundcard until I installed the missing 2 libraries. Here is a list of what I have installed in synaptic under a search for sdl libsdl-gfx1.2-4 libsdl pango1 libsdl-sound1.2 libsdl-ttf2.0-0 gambas2-gb-sdl gambas2-gb-sdl-sound libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio libsdl1.2debian libsdlmpeg0 mplayer-skins libsdl-image 1.2 libsdl-mixer 1.2 vlc-nox mplayer mplayernogui Here is what's showing as manually altered under sdl (the ones I changed) You have to have all 3 of these installed... libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio libsdl1.2 debian libsdl-sound1.2 and just for posterity if it had anything to do with alsa at all when I installed the alsa mixer and alsa gui... this is what's showing up in synaptic filtering for manually installed under a search for alsa alsamixergui alsaplayer-common libsd-alsa0 alsa-utils gnome-alsamixer alsa-oss alsa-base libsound2 alsa-tools-gui libsound2-plugins linux-sound-base gstreamer0.10-alsa qamix libclalsadrv (this is the alsa driver c++ access library) gamix bluez-alsa I'm sorry I cannot say if the sdl libraries I installed cured the problem alone... Or if it was in combination with the alsa utilities I added. All I can say is if you have the same sdl installs and UT still doesn't work try checking out the sdl file dependancies and see if you have the alsa installs I do. I can definitely say it has nothing to do with the graphics card or drivers I was getting lag and rough frames in UT but it was due to: The UT default internet connection setting was set to 8, I'm on a cable modem so I set it to 24 The UT refresh rate was over 80 exceeding the 60 hz of my monitor and the setting of 50 in the compiz options. I set the UT refresh rate to 50 I also maxed out the # of sends to the server It works perfectly smooth now with no sound crashing. 6 year old Dell Inspiron 9100 with P4 1mb on die cache and 1gig ram with hyperthreading and a usb keyboard I have the troublesome radeon mobility 9700 graphics card. It's actually a dell built 9600 with 128 pin bus and 128 ram. I wish I had the 9800 with the 256 pin bus and 256 ram. my old 9700 won't run DOD source or RedOrechestra smoothly anymore even with rendering turned down UT is playing better on my machine than dod non source, painkiller and doom3 ever did UT rocks Compiz-fusion wasn't working for me under jaunty because the legacy drivers were not supported but works great under the stock Karmic setup...