[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] real muting

[The Wanderer]

On 12/21/2005 01:24 PM, Ivan Kalvachev wrote:

> 2005/12/21, Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de>:
> 
>> On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 03:48:58PM +0200, Ivan Kalvachev wrote:

>>> I'm gonna kill the person who tries to commit this.
>> 
>> You know, some arguments why the patch is bad or how it could be
>> improved could do wonders here ;)
> 
> The drawback were already well discussed and I got the impression
> that the patch is dropped without need to step in and flame.
> 
> But when I saw Wanderer mail I get scared that somebody could get the
> crazy idea this is something that must be committed...

Okay, I did not get the same impression you did; I thought the patch was
still pending. If you think it should be rejected, then in the absence
of opposition I'll drop it.

> In short this patch cannot be improved because it is flowed by
> design. Instead of using alsa mute it stops the playback.
> 
> The not so obvious side effects is that the volume stays at the same
> level and for some  (old crappy) cards you could still hear the white
> noise.
> 
> Other side effect is that the device could be used by another program
> while muted and if you unmute it you are going to either quit
> mplayer or loose ability to hear anything without mplayer restart.

I thought that this "side effect" was actually the intended benefit - at
least remotely analogous to how sound can be played by other programs
while MPlayer is paused. Maybe I've just completely misunderstood the
original thread.

> This side effect is know as oss pause behaviour I had flamed before.
> The big difference is that here we don't have pause but running
> video...
> 
> I don't remember how it was solved, but this also mean that we must
> change the time calculation at runtime, that would always be
> hackish...
> 
> The mess with lost frames (a&v) and the big skip is clear and well
> discussed. I personally am very pissed by such behaviour and it is
> the main reason to prefer -ao alsa over -ao oss. (even despite the
> fact that my donated sound card can play multiple streams).

I didn't notice anything (either in the discussion or in my own limited
tests) about "lost frames", just the skip. Since the behaviour appears
only when using the explicit "[m]ute" command, which I'd never used
before testing this patch and probably will not use again for the
foreseeable future, I don't think it's likely to be too much of a
problem - for me, at least.

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.