Pavucontrol can't change the output sound card of some programs (VLC...)

1

Hello,

I noticed this thing quite recently: for ages, I’ve been using pavucontrol to change the audio output of my programs. This is particularly useful when I plug my bluetooth headset: sometimes some programs output on the wrong device.

But today, I’m hitting a problem with VLC (and stremio and a mystic QtPulseAudio): impossible to change the output device, I can’t manage to play on my bluetooth headset, when I change the output it directly comes back to the internal output:, while in Firefox and other applications it works fine:

While clicking:

image
image1914×962 79.2 KB

and after clicking:

image
image1915×266 22.5 KB

I even tried to change it directly from VLC (Audio > Audio device), same issue. Any idea what’s wrong?

Here is the log of VLC, when I try to change it I get nothing special:

$ vlc myfile.mp4           
VLC media player 3.0.12 Vetinari (revision 3.0.12-1-0-gd147bb5e7e)
[00000000004234c0] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
Qt: Session management error: Could not open network socket
[00000000004ee3c0] vlcpulse audio output error: digital pass-through stream connection failure: Not supported
[00000000004ee3c0] main audio output error: module not functional
[00007fdbf0d3f490] main decoder error: failed to create audio output
libva info: VA-API version 1.10.0
libva info: Trying to open /run/opengl-driver/lib/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib32/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1
libva info: Trying to open /run/opengl-driver/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib32/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1
[00007fdbd8001ff0] glconv_vaapi_x11 gl error: vaInitialize: unknown libva error
libva info: VA-API version 1.10.0
libva info: Trying to open /run/opengl-driver/lib/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib32/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1
libva info: Trying to open /run/opengl-driver/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib32/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1
[00007fdbd8001ff0] glconv_vaapi_drm gl error: vaInitialize: unknown libva error
libva info: VA-API version 1.10.0
libva info: Trying to open /run/opengl-driver/lib/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib32/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: va_openDriver() returns -1
[00007fdbd8001ff0] glconv_vaapi_drm gl error: vaInitialize: unknown libva error
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_va_gl.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
2

Hum, not sure what I did, but I killed pulseaudio and started it again and now it works… Among the many things I tried:
I first added:

~/.alsoftrc in

drivers = alsa,pulse,core,oss

[pulse]
allow-moves=yes

and

$ vlc --reset-config --reset-plugins-cache
$ pulseaudio --check
$ pulseaudio -k
3

I have experienced this several times as well and systemctl --user restart pulseaudio was always the workaround for me.

1 Like
4

Ok, thanks. Nobody knows why there is this issue ? Since recently I also have strange behaviours: my bluetooth headset is often muted without much reasons, notably when I plug my external microphone.