Playing videos using Totem.

[Steven Haigh]

Quoting Dennis Jacobfeuerborn <d.jacobfeuerborn at conversis.de>:
> Steven Haigh wrote:
>> Has anyone got this working properly? Can totem use alsa? It would   
>> be nice to be able to play multiple sounds at once (gaim sounds +   
>> video for example) however I really can't seem to find a way to be   
>> able to make this happen, and still get acceptable performance...
>
> Have you checked System -> Preferences -> More Preferences ->
> Multimedia Systems Selector?

Yeah, after about a day of playing with this, it looks as though the  
redhat-sound-config program doesn't write /etc/asound.conf correctly  
for multiple PCM streams to a single device. This may be because it  
doesn't work on all sound cards, hence it's been disabled by default  
(however I'm just guessing here).

For those who want to play more than one wavestream at once using  
alsa, you can put something like the following as your /etc/asound.conf.

###### Begin /etc/asound.conf ######
pcm.card0 {
   type hw
   card 0
}

pcm.!default {
   type plug
   slave.pcm "dmixer"
}


pcm.dmixer {
   type dmix
   ipc_key 1025
   slave {
     pcm "hw:0,0"
     period_time 0
     period_size 2048    #1024
     buffer_size 32768   #4096
                         #periods 128
     rate 48000          #44100
   }

   bindings {
     0 0
     1 1
   }
}
###### End /etc/asound.conf ######

 From here, if you edit /etc/esd.conf to contain the following, you  
can get esd to play using alsa.

###### Begin /etc/esd.conf ######
[esd]
auto_spawn=1
spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 2 -d default
spawn_wait_ms=100
# default options are used in spawned and non-spawned mode
default_options=
###### End /etc/esd.conf ######

This means that esd will play sounds via alsa (which means your gnome  
event sounds will work) - while also being able multiple audio streams  
via other devices (think gaim/xmms while totem is playing a movie).

Although this should probably be enabled by default - as it's a much  
better system (well, at least the mods to /etc/asound.conf), after  
quite a bit of research, at least it's possible :)

-- 
Steven Haigh

Email: netwiz at crc.id.au
Web: http://www.crc.id.au
Phone: (03) 9017 0597 - 0412 935 897