C.2. Various A-V sync and other audio problems
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C.2. Various A-V sync and other audio problems

C.2.1. General audio delay or jerky sound (exists with all or many files)

  • most common: buggy audio driver! - try to use different drivers, try ALSA 0.9 OSS emulation with -ao oss, also try -ao sdl, sometimes it helps. If your file plays fine with -nosound, then you can be sure it's sound card (driver) problem.

  • audio buffer problems (buffer size badly detected)

    Workaround: MPlayer's -abs option

  • samplerate problems - maybe your card doesn't support the samplerate used in your files - try the resampling filter (-af resample=...)

  • slow machine (CPU or VGA)

    try with -vo null, if it plays well, then you have slow VGA card/driver

    Workaround: buy a faster card or read this documentation about how to speed up

    Also try -framedrop

C.2.2. Audio delay/de-sync specific to one or a few files

  • bad file

    Workaround:

    • -ni or -nobps option (for non-interleaved or bad files)

      and/or

    • -mc 0(required for files with badly interleaved VBR audio)

      and/or

    • -delay or +/- keys at runtime to adjust delay

    If none of these help, please upload the file, we'll check (and fix).

  • your sound card doesn't support 48kHz playback

    Workaround: buy a better sound card... or try to decrease fps by 10% (use -fps 27 for a 30fps movie) or use the resample filter

  • slow machine(if A-V is not around 0, and the last number in the status line increasing)

    Workaround: -framedrop

C.2.3. No sound at all

  • your file uses an unsupported audio codec

    read the documentation and help us adding support for it

C.2.4. No picture at all (just plain grey/green window)

  • your file uses an unsupported video codec

    Workaround: read the documentation and help us adding support for it

  • auto-selected codec can't decode the file, try to select another using -vc or -vfm options

  • you try to play DivX 3.x file with OpenDivX decoder or XviD (-vc odivx) - install DivX4Linux and recompile player

C.2.5. Video-out problems

First note: options -fs -vm and -zoom are just recommendations, not (yet) supported by all drivers. So it isn't a bug if it doesn't work. Only a few driver supports scaling/zooming, don't expect this from x11 or dga.

OSD/sub flickering. 

  • x11 driver: sorry, it can't be fixed now

  • xv driver: use -double option

Green image using mga_vid (-vo mga / -vo xmga). 

  • mga_vid misdetected your card's RAM amount, reload it using mga_ram_size option

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C.1. Special system/CPU-specific bugs/problems Home Appendix D. MPlayer skin format