[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#643936: libasound2-plugins: the a52 module filter fails to convert pcm stream to ac3

[Luis Listas]

Package: libasound2-plugins
Version: 1.0.24-2+b1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

When using the alsa filter a52 to convert a 5.1 pcm stream to ac3 and 
then send it to the
internal intel SPDIF interface the operation fails with the message that 
"Specified sample_fmt
  is not supported" during the conversion to ac3 phase. It should be 
noted that
the current configuration used to work and there were no changes to it 
since it was working.

My .asoundrc file is this:

---
$ cat ~/.asoundrc
pcm.a52encode {
         type a52
         format S16_LE
         channels 6
         rate 48000
         bitrate 448
         card "Intel"
}

pcm.hometheater {
         type plug
         slave.pcm "a52encode"
         slave.channels 6
}
---

The problem can be seen by using speaker-test:

---

$ speaker-test -Dhometheater -c6 -twav

speaker-test 1.0.24.2

Playback device is hometheater
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 6 channels
WAV file(s)
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 3072 to 15360
Period size range from 1536 to 1536
Using max buffer size 15360
Periods = 4
[ac3 @ 0x20014e0] Specified sample_fmt is not supported.
Unable to set hw params for playback: Argumento inválido
Setting of hwparams failed: Argumento inválido

---

(Argumento inválido = invalid argument/parameter, in english)

At that point I used to hear the speaker identification for all speakers 
that are connected
to my hometheater system by a SPDIF cable.

By googling around I've found the following post:

http://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/ticket/363

It seems that the cause might be a change in libavcodec library that now 
enforces the rule that
the calling program should specify the desired sample_fmt before calling 
the "convert" function.

I've tried to uninstall and reinstall libavcodec52 and libavcodec53. 
Finally, I've compiled the
unstable version of libavcodec53 and installed on testing. But the 
outcome was the same error at
each try.

The repositories I have enabled in apt are only Debian/testing main 
contrib non-free,
plus unstable only for deb-src.

Thanks,
Luis


-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
   APT prefers testing
   APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.0.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=pt_BR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=pt_BR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages libasound2-plugins depends on:
ii  libasound2                1.0.24.1-4
ii  libavcodec53              4:0.7.1-7
ii  libc6                     2.13-21
ii  libjack0 [libjack-0.116]  1:0.121.0+svn4469-2
ii  libpulse0                 0.9.23-1
ii  libsamplerate0            0.1.8-1
ii  libspeexdsp1              1.2~rc1-1

libasound2-plugins recommends no packages.

libasound2-plugins suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information