Support for Pepper Flash / HTML5 vids?

[igorzwx]

Now I'm even more confused with your totem example. Opera also makes no sense to me.

Why do programs need gstreamer/libgstoss4audio.so without needing it? I try hard really, but more and more I'm loosing track of this audio mess on Linux...

To understand Linux, you may need to consume a good dose of Maxism-Leninism.
You may find it rather amusing, especially, the British brand of Maxism-Cargoism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Worsley
Worsley, Peter (1957), The Trumpet Shall Sound: A study of "cargo cults in Melanesia, London: MacGibbon & Kee. Subsequent editions by MacGibbon & Kee, 1968; and Schocken Books, 1968, 1986, & 1987.
Worsley, Peter (1982), Marx and Marxism, Key Sociologists series, Chichester, UK: Ellis Horwood; London & New York: Tavistock Publications, ISBN 0-85312-348-9, retrieved 4 October 2010 Subsequent publications Routledge 1989, 1990 ISBN 0-415-04321-2; 2002 ISBN 0-415-28537-2.

See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmlYe2KS0-Y

Opera is likely to use another plugin "libgstossaudio.so" (it seems to be a kind of ALSA plugin for ALSA-OSS emulation):

Code: Select all

$ cd /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10
$ ls | grep libgstoss
libgstoss4audio.so
libgstossaudio.so

This hypothesis can be easily verified.

[nuc]

Hah, figured it out! Opera sound works if either libgstoss4audio.so or libgstossaudio.so is not available, but it doesn't work when both are not available! When I remove both the video can't be played.
Without a doubt Opera uses libgstossaudio.so as a fallback when libgstoss4audio.so is not available. So Opera isn't crap actually


Maybe the same applies for totem etc, because e.g. libgstossaudio.so is used as a fallback but doesn't work correctly?

[igorzwx]

Hah, figured it out! Opera sound works if either libgstoss4audio.so or libgstossaudio.so is not available, but it doesn't work when both are not available! When I remove both the video can't be played.
Without a doubt Opera uses libgstossaudio.so as a fallback when libgstoss4audio.so is not available. So Opera isn't crap actually

Maybe the same applies for totem etc, because e.g. libgstossaudio.so is used as a fallback but doesn't work correctly?

This may not contradict Marxist dialectics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic# ... dialectics

In a word, the German Cargo cultists, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, did re-hack Hegel's theory "without any doubt", and even without reading his books. Then Lenin and Trotsky re-hack Russia. Following their example, Linux was re-hacked into Lennax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering

It is still unclear which "oss-plugin" is used as "fallback", and which one has the first priority for Opera.

If I am not mistaken:

ALSA-OSS emulation – OSS3 API
libgstossaudio.so – OSS3 API
libgstoss4audio.so – OSS4 API

Opera is said to be "proprietary freeware with open source components" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)

Perhaps, Cesium may inspect the source code and explain if it is crap or not.

[nuc]

It is still unclear which "oss-plugin" is used as "fallback", and which one has the first priority for Opera.

Well isn't this handled by gstreamer? If so, ALSA emulation surely isn't used by default.
But surely there must be a way to determine which one is used?

If I am not mistaken:

ALSA-OSS emulation – OSS3 API
libgstossaudio.so – OSS3 API
libgstoss4audio.so – OSS4 API

Yeah I thought the same. But maybe this isn't emulation at all, but simply OSSv3 fallback? What would be the sense for gstreamer to implement it's own emulation? This doesn't make sense to me...

Opera is said to be "proprietary freeware with open source components" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)

Of course it has open source components but Opera itself is proprietary.


Why is there actually no sound from PPAPI Flash? Is it Chrome's, Flash's or OSS's fault? Would there be another libflashsupport-oss package needed, specialized on PPAPI Flash or could PPAPI flash just use the libflashsupport-oss lib?

[igorzwx]

It is still unclear which "oss-plugin" is used as "fallback", and which one has the first priority for Opera.

But surely there must be a way to determine which one is used?

Yes. It is still unclear. You may simply remove "libgstossaudio.so" and use "libgstoss4audio.so".
It makes sense to test it with Opera and HTML5.

You may also try to find Cesium and ask him to explain something.

---------------------------
EDIT:
Perhaps, it makes sense to try Opera, because Google products are not reliable.
They might be harmful for Ubuntu users.
For example: Google text-chat and Google Video/Voice chat are not encrypted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Talk#Encryption
End-to-end messages are unencrypted. Google plans to add support for chat and call encryption in a future release.

See also:
Off-the-Record Messaging
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging
CryptoSystem Backdoors
http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-268.htm
http://media.grc.com/sn/sn-268.mp3
Side-Channel Privacy Leakage
http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-264.htm
http://media.grc.com/sn/sn-264.mp3

[shoober420]

What about HTML5 sound in Chromium? I'm trying to get OSS4 installed on my system, but will not even bother if OSS4 can't produce sound with HTML5 videos. Opera is just a Chromium branch, so if it doesn't work in Opera, it most likely won't work in Chromium either. Flash is not an option, I refuse to use it. So does HTML5 audio work with OSS4?

[nuc]

OSS worked fine with Opera. However since Opera now switched to a Chromium base this has probably changed. You can of course still use the Presto based version. [EDIT:] Appears the Chrome based Opera isn't even ported to Linux. So Opera works fine with OSS. If they base their new Opera on gstreamer too, it will also have OSS support.
The problem is not that "OSS4 can't produce sound with HTML5 videos", but that out of some reason the Google devs refuse to add OSS support. Not OSS has to handle the browser, but the browser needs to handle the sound driver (OSS in this case).

However it is easily possible to instruct alsa-lib to use OSS as it's ouput system. In short: sound data that an Application is trying to send to ALSA is being automaticly redirected and handled by OSS. It works as a sort of ALSA emulation.
See post http://4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 212#p19318

One the other side e.g. firefox will very soon support OSS by default (as soon as debian updates their dated gstreamer 0.10 packages to gstreamer 1.x).

[shoober420]

The problem is not that "OSS4 can't produce sound with HTML5 videos", but that out of some reason the Google devs refuse to add OSS support.

I'm going to go make a thread about adding OSS support on the Chromium forums. I love Chromium, and can't see my self using any other browser. I love everything about Chromium. Speed, Security, and bleeding edge. Its leading in HTML5 support, has sandboxing built in from the ground up, and beats every other browser in benchmarks. Its a beast.

However it is easily possible to instruct alsa-lib to use OSS as it's ouput system. In short: sound data that an Application is trying to send to ALSA is being automaticly redirected and handled by OSS. It works as a sort of ALSA emulation.

Is this still considered emulation? I'm against emulation of any kind. I need the real thing. Emulation always produces less accurate results. I'm sure it would sound better if I used native OSS instead of using some sort of wrapper to translate the ALSA calls to OSS.

[Matti]

The problem is not that "OSS4 can't produce sound with HTML5 videos", but that out of some reason the Google devs refuse to add OSS support.

I'm going to go make a thread about adding OSS support on the Chromium forums. I love Chromium, and can't see my self using any other browser. I love everything about Chromium. Speed, Security, and bleeding edge. Its leading in HTML5 support, has sandboxing built in from the ground up, and beats every other browser in benchmarks. Its a beast.

There was and still is issue reported for Chromium about adding OSSv4 support but the devs set the status to "Won't Fix" and comments are restricted. Chromium and Chrome support only ALSA on Linux just like Firefox. None of this browsers have direct support for the most used currently on Linux PulseAudio let alone the niche OSSv4.

Issue 19470: Linux support for OSS 4 or option to build with no sound

As already mentioned by nuc you can get sound in Chromium / Chrome through ALSA emulation. Use the method described on ArchLinux Wiki for Open Sound System.

[shoober420]

As already mentioned by nuc you can get sound in Chromium / Chrome through ALSA emulation. Use the method described on ArchLinux Wiki for Open Sound System.

If I choose to do this, won't this degrade the sound quality, rather then running it natively?

[nuc]

If I choose to do this, won't this degrade the sound quality, rather then running it natively?

As you've already mentioned in the other thread, it shouldn't make that much of a difference - it might add some latency though. If you care for best sound quality in your browser (which IMO isn't priority number 1 because e.g. youtube videos aren't the highest quality anyways) you should try firefox 30 (the next version). It should ship gstreamer 1.0 by default (however your distro might decide not to do so) and as such support oss out-of-the-box

[shoober420]

I think i'll just use stick with Chromium, since IMO, its the most secure browser. Security is always a first for me. I do watch a lot of YouTube videos in HTML5, and Chromium is leading in HTML5 support, so I'll just use it for now (although I'm sure FireFox has decent HTML5 video playback as well). One day I'll compare Chromium audio with FireFox audio and see if there is an audible difference.

UPDATE:

I installed a FireFox nightly build, which was version 32. To my amazement, there was no sound using FireFox and watching HTML5 YouTube videos. So, out of desperation, I installed the libasound2-plugins package. I know have audio in Chromium. I can also play Steam games with sound now, since some Steam games (like Counter-Strike 1.6) don't support OSS4. I have to enable vmix0 for CS1.6 to have correct playback. If I don't, the sound stutters and cuts out at random. But for Chromium, I can watch HTML5 videos without the use of vmix0. There is definitely some audio latency for sure. I could easily tell when playing CS1.6. I made a thread in the Valve Github to support the OSS4 API in Steam.

[nuc]

I installed a FireFox nightly build, which was version 32. To my amazement, there was no sound using FireFox and watching HTML5 YouTube videos.

The distributions still can decide if they want to use the gstreamer backend or not. Considering debian has a rather slow packaging policy they might need to handle things differently. Firefox will enable gstreamer 1.0 by default only when it's in debian stable.
It might also be that the debian Sid devs simply do not know of this newly supported backend.

I'm on Archlinux here, and I suspect that the gstreamer backend will be used by default with the next version - if not, I will file a bug report.

[shoober420]

The distributions still can decide if they want to use the gstreamer backend or not. Considering debian has a rather slow packaging policy they might need to handle things differently. Firefox will enable gstreamer 1.0 by default only when it's in debian stable.
It might also be that the debian Sid devs simply do not know of this newly supported backend.

I'm on Archlinux here, and I suspect that the gstreamer backend will be used by default with the next version - if not, I will file a bug report.

I went threw my installed packages, and I do have gstreamer 1.0 on my system. It was there when I tested FireFox. How can I enable OSS4 in FireFox using gstreamer? Is there some command I must use to make it use OSS4 instead of ALSA?

[nuc]

First try to install gstreamer-properties and run it from terminal. Then you should be able to choose gstreamer from a drop-down menu I think.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/OS ... _GStreamer
You probably have gstreamer 0.10 - it's ok too but their might be some bug. I do not know how firefox is being compiled on Debian Sid so I can't say it will work. What I do know is that the firefox devs are about to ship gstreamer 1.0 in their default builds, when Devian Stable will have gst 1.0 packages in the repos. That's their plan.