Bug#432085: Totem doesn't find codec

[Takehiko Abe]

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 17:04 +0200, Loïc Minier wrote: 

>  On most hardware, esound is required if you need multiple
>  applications to output sound silmutaneously.  For example, you
>  receive an email alert when listening to music.
>
>  When esound is running, you should configure all apps (or they
>  should configure themselves automatically) to use esound.

I can play multiple sound files (tried three -- ogg, mp4, and music
CD) simultaneously without esound, but _not_ with esound.

[There is no obvious way to tell totem to use esound instead of
alsa -- I couldn't find one. However, I prefer not to use esound
because it looks like I can get away without it.]

>  My questions are:
>  - how did we come to the problem which made you report a bug: is it
>    because you enabled esound that you got the bug?

After upgrading some packages on 2007-07-7, totem stopped playing a
mp4 file reporting:

    "Video codec 'ISO-MPEG4/OpenDivx' is not handled. <...>"

This was puzzling because I don't remember I ever deinstalled any
codec (although it is possible that I did inadvertently).

It led me to this bug report, and because the bug was filed on the
same date (and an error message was the same), I guessed that I had
the same problem and subscribed to the page.

Soon after, I received your message (addressed to Aurélien PROVIN)
suggesting to try xine. I installed xine-ui package and it reported
that 'sound device is busy' instead of the above codec error.

Xine started to work after I killed esound daemon. And totem also
began to work fine again. So I replied to your message thinking I
found the culplit.

My thought was that totem is wrongly reporting a codec error while the
real cause was in sound device.  However, for some reason, totem
started to report the sound device problem (when esound is running)
and I haven't seen the codec error since.

The problem is that I lost track which packages I installed/ removed
during the course and I don't recall I ever enabled esound myself.


>  - if it's because of esound, would you agree that if xine tried to
>    use esound if available and then would default to alsa, then your
>    bug would be fixed?

I guess I agree. however, I think it would be better if esound does
not block some apps to access sound device.


Thanks,
T.