Option to configure the default channels output

[Id2ndR]

STR :
- play a DVD (with 5.1 channels support),
=> hear that you only get stereo output (but output on 6 channels thanks to pulseaudio),
- switch to 5.1 channels (right clic > audio > audio device) instead of the default stereo
=> hear that you get 5.1 output.

Expected result : the second step should not be necessary. VLC may switch to 5.1 channels automatically or user should have the ability to configure the default channels output.

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

Do you have vlc-plugin-pulse installed and selected "default" or "pulseaudio" as output plugin? I can't reproduce your problems with pulseaudio.

[Id2ndR (id2ndr)]

Yes vlc-plugin-pulse is installed however I have uses a PPA to get a newer version of VLC for some time. So I can't tell if the trouble exist with the current package in lucid (if this has been fixed since I use an other package).

[Rémi Denis-Courmont (rdenis)]

The PulseAudio plugin in VLC 1.2.0 preserves the channel layout by default. Then it is up to the PulseAudio daemon to do The Right Thing.

For ALSA output, there really is no code change to make. The default ALSA device is mono/stereo only. If you want to change that, you can set the ALSA audio output device to "surround51" in the VLC preferences. It will be easier in VLC 1.2.0, but it should already be feasible.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package vlc - 2.0.0~unix-0ubuntu1

---------------
vlc (2.0.0~unix-0ubuntu1) precise; urgency=low

  * New upstream release (Closes: #499381, #573064, #624027, LP: #455825,
    #573775, #695882, #705151, #708448, #738381, #743581, #747757, #817924,
    #931083).
  * Remove dropped mozilla-plugin-vlc, vlc-plugin-ggi, and vlc-plugin-svgalib.
    The Mozilla browser plug-in is now provided by a separate source tarball.
  * Add new plugins to and remove dropped plugins from vlc-nox.
  * Add new and remove dropped build dependencies:
    + libbluray-dev (for Blu-ray support)
    + libresid-builder-dev
    + libsamplerate0-dev
    + libsidplay2-dev
    + lbspeexdsp-dev
    + libxcb-composite0-dev
    - libgtk2.0-dev
    - xulrunner-dev
  * vlc-plugin-fluidsynth depends on fluid-soundfont-gm or
    musescore-soundfont-gm for having a sound font for playing MIDI files.
  * Drop all patches (they were either backported or accepted by upstream).
  * Update symbols for libvlc5.
  * Install plugins.dat instead of running vlc-cache-gen in postinst.
  * Update minimum version of build dependencies.
  * Change Build-Dependency from libupnp3-dev to unversioned libupnp-dev.
    (Closes: #656831)
 -- Benjamin Drung <email address hidden> Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:34:02 +0100