Dear everyone,

the following error appears when I try to play a clip or project in kdenlive:
"SDL failed to open audio: Couldn't find any hardware audio formats"
Changin the audio-settings in Kdenlive does not help at all.

I can't interpret the error message - what are hardware audio formats?

Any help is appreciated!

Holger

dehnhardt wrote:Dear everyone,

the following error appears when I try to play a clip or project in kdenlive:
"SDL failed to open audio: Couldn't find any hardware audio formats"
Changin the audio-settings in Kdenlive does not help at all.

I can't interpret the error message - what are hardware audio formats?

Any help is appreciated!

Holger

Does your desktop (i.e. KDE) recognize your sound card and play out properly?

Did you select 'automatic' for the audio driver?

Steve Guilford wrote:

dehnhardt wrote:Dear everyone,

the following error appears when I try to play a clip or project in kdenlive:
"SDL failed to open audio: Couldn't find any hardware audio formats"
Changin the audio-settings in Kdenlive does not help at all.

I can't interpret the error message - what are hardware audio formats?

Any help is appreciated!

Holger

Does your desktop (i.e. KDE) recognize your sound card and play out properly?

Did you select 'automatic' for the audio driver?

Ah, sorry for the briefness and thank you for your quick response!
Yes, my desktop is KDE (distribution is Ubuntu Studio) and sound is configured properly. Alsa works as well as Jack (each on a different device) and the clips play with sound in VLC and Kino...
System sounds works as well.
I use automatic for the audio driver but have tested all other options as well.

Holger

dehnhardt wrote:Ah, sorry for the briefness and thank you for your quick response!
Yes, my desktop is KDE (distribution is Ubuntu Studio) and sound is configured properly. Alsa works as well as Jack (each on a different device) and the clips play with sound in VLC and Kino...
System sounds works as well.
I use automatic for the audio driver but have tested all other options as well.

Holger

So much for the easy stuff.

What audio codec are you using in the clip? Does KdenLive say it has that codec available? (go to Settings-->Run Config Wizard)

Steve Guilford wrote:[
So much for the easy stuff.

What audio codec are you using in the clip? Does KdenLive say it has that codec available? (go to Settings-->Run Config Wizard)

Hmm, it's a capture from a video camaraderie via FireWire. To be honest: I neothercdon't know what video codec is used (but this works) neither do I know what audio codex is used... sorry but in opposite to pure audio I'm completele new to video! This files do have the .DVD suffix and should be PAL. But I have extracted the audio to 48000 WAV (which works and is audible in audacity) and added it to an new audio track in kdenlive and even this gave the same error.

Holger

If you run Kdenlive in a terminal when trying to work with audio, is anything of relevance output?
Hopefully libSDL will indicate why it is unable to handle the audio.

Also, check in your package manager that a package such as sdl-plugins or similar isn't present - if it is, please make sure it is installed.

bcooksley wrote:If you run Kdenlive in a terminal when trying to work with audio, is anything of relevance output?
Hopefully libSDL will indicate why it is unable to handle the audio.

Also, check in your package manager that a package such as sdl-plugins or similar isn't present - if it is, please make sure it is installed.

This is the output:
...
[dv @ 0x7f057c002420] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
[dv @ 0x7f057c004400] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
"SDL failed to open audio: Couldn't find any hardware audio formats"

So unfortunately not very helpful...

And here you see all sdl packages with plugin in their name.

Code: Select all

root@muse:~# aptitude search sdl |grep plug
p   liquidsoap-plugin-sdl           - audio streaming language -- SDL plugin   
p   liquidsoap-plugin-sdl:i386      - audio streaming language -- SDL plugin   
p   mupen64plus-audio-sdl           - sdl audio output plugin for mupen64plus   
p   mupen64plus-audio-sdl:i386      - sdl audio output plugin for mupen64plus   
p   mupen64plus-audio-sdl-dbg       - sdl audio output plugin for mupen64plus de
p   mupen64plus-audio-sdl-dbg:i386  - sdl audio output plugin for mupen64plus de
p   mupen64plus-input-sdl           - sdl input device plugin for mupen64plus   
p   mupen64plus-input-sdl:i386      - sdl input device plugin for mupen64plus   
p   mupen64plus-input-sdl-dbg       - sdl input device plugin for mupen64plus de
p   mupen64plus-input-sdl-dbg:i386  - sdl input device plugin for mupen64plus de
i   vlc-plugin-sdl                  - SDL video and audio output plugin for VLC
p   vlc-plugin-sdl:i386             - SDL video and audio output plugin for VLC


I don't think this is what you mean - am I right?

Holger

Okay, quite unusual - my suspicion is that for some reason SDL is trying to open a specific audio device and is failing, probably because Pulseaudio or JACK is occupying it. Could you try another application that uses SDL to see if it is also affected? Unfortunately i'm not aware of any applications that do... (although I do note that VLC has a SDL output plugin).

bcooksley wrote:Okay, quite unusual - my suspicion is that for some reason SDL is trying to open a specific audio device and is failing, probably because Pulseaudio or JACK is occupying it. Could you try another application that uses SDL to see if it is also affected? Unfortunately i'm not aware of any applications that do... (although I do note that VLC has a SDL output plugin).

Thanks again.
Currently I'm not sure which application uses SDL (I know, several games use it bot: no Games on my production system...)
I will search for one next week when I'm back from holidays or make a small test-program...

All the best

Holger

dehnhardt wrote:

bcooksley wrote:Okay, quite unusual - my suspicion is that for some reason SDL is trying to open a specific audio device and is failing, probably because Pulseaudio or JACK is occupying it. Could you try another application that uses SDL to see if it is also affected? Unfortunately i'm not aware of any applications that do... (although I do note that VLC has a SDL output plugin).

Thanks again.
Currently I'm not sure which application uses SDL (I know, several games use it bot: no Games on my production system...)
I will search for one next week when I'm back from holidays or make a small test-program...

All the best

Holger

Problem is solved. The default ALSA-device was a hw device which was not capable of playing back the 48khz WAV. I changed this to an plughw device and there the software does the conversion - which solved the problem!