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Mageia 1 [solved]


AussieJohn
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I have setup Skype on my computer and connected to my friends in Maine USA. (I am using a Logitech HD Pro Webcam C910 with Stereo Microphone.) They got my Video image AOK but no sound so it meant that the Microphone connection was not working. I got their video and sound perfectly.

The problem with the Microphone took ages to work out and the solution was to get every thing related to pulse-audio off my computer because that was the only way to enable the ability to select the correct device in Skype options.

My neighbour set up Skype on her computer again so I could check the full in and out before I retry to connect to my friends in Maine in the morning. She got my Video and Sound AOK which meant that the Microphone problem has at last been resolved. However While I get her sound AOK I am not getting a reliable image and when there is an image it is not in time with the sound. The difference in timing can be anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds. The lady said that seemed like it was being recorded and then playing back somehow. I cannot find anywhere a mention of recording so I think that is ruled out.

She is running a Windows version of Skype so I am wondering whether there may be something amiss in her settings regarding sending video.

 

In both Skype windows we can each see our own video miniatures showing that our own cameras are working but I feel hers is not sending. Would I be correct in this or is there another possible explanation ???.

Any quick advise would be welcomed.

 

Cheers. John.

 

 

[moved from Hardware by spinynorman]

Edited by AussieJohn
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If she's running Skype 4.2 it's a pain the lag is bad. We removed it from our Windows computer and downgraded to 4.0 or 4.1 because 4.2 sucked big time. Chances are this is what you are experiencing. Solution, downgrade 4.2 and disable the option for automatic updating.

 

I haven't checked to see if there is anything newer than 4.2 to see if the problem goes away, and I don't want to try and then have to go to the hassle of removing and reinstalling 4.1 again.

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I don't have to worry about it now because I fixed the problem.

 

The problem was caused by pulse audio controlling things. It prevented Skype's Audio Device settings from displaying alternate device options and it was obviously selecting the wrong one.

I got rid of everything pulse audio, and rebooted. When I then brought up Skype, there was a whole heap of options in the Skype Audio Device selection. It was a piece of cake to select the correct one, which I did. My next door neighbour kindly reactivated Skype on her Windows 7 computer and we successfully tested back and forth many times over the day.

 

Just finished a delightful 20 minute connection to my friends in Maine. Sound and picture were great. I had a little fluctuation with the colour of my received image when using full screen (24 inch) but they said they had a steady colour on their received image. This might be because they are using a laptop built-in webcam perhaps of a lower video quality because when I reduced the screen size to half screen the image colour was very good and steady. My image send was for a large screen size so would have been scaled for their laptop.( I am using a 24 inch LG monitor).

 

With Pulse Audio out of the system I decided to check that my audio was OK in Firefox, Audacious, Kaffeine and Movie Player (Totem). All worked great. In fact I would say the sound quality had improved in all them. A problem I had previously of the audio cutting out when playing back video clips I had recorded with my HD Digital Video Camera has also disappeared. The audio used to cut out about 30 seconds into the video most times but not every time.

I think it is safe to say I have no need for Pulse Audio so I will leave it out of my install in future installs.

 

Isadora, I will follow your suggestion and copy my two posts over to Mageia because it may prove to be helpful to others over there.

 

Problem can be marked as SOLVED.

 

Cheers. John.

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John,

 

Thanks for your extensive reply.

And great to hear about the improvements after quitting PulseAudio.

It means you uninstalled PulseAudio-soundserver, as well as al other pulse-related libs, modules and/or plugins,

or would task-pulseaudio be sufficient?

 

isadora

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Skype can work with PulseAudio. You just need to know where to set the options for the microphone. Under the sound setup you sometimes have to look and see how many Microphone options there are, sometimes there are two to choose one and switching from one to the other would give you what you needed to use.

 

I'm using Skype with Pulseaudio, have audio and video working fine. Just you need to look in a different place for the configuration, not in skype.

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I tried constantly mucking around with pulse-audio, trying changes in all the usual places and no matter what I tried, the only success came when I got rid of it and thus was able to make the appropriate single change in Skype.

Interesting fact that my audio throughout the various apps that use audio are working perfectly as I outlined. which leads one to think that pulse-audio is an unnecessary and waste of resource.

As I also said, I believe that sound quality has improved. Unless someone can explain to me how I would be better off with having pulse-audio in my system, not someone elses with perhaps different needs and uses, then I wont even consider reinstalling pulse-audio. I remember way way back during the introduction of pulse-audio that the benefits of the use of pulse-audio was questionable. I now think it is questionable still. It was described as a great way to make a system that was reasonably operable, vastly more complicated for no really proven benefit. I am starting to think that that is still the case.

If that was not the case then how come all my various audio using programs are still working perfectly and even seem to be improved without Pulse-audio ??.

 

Cheers. John.

 

P.S. My webcam has its own inbuilt stereo microphone unlike other webcams that have mono mikes or use external mikes. Pulse-audio was constantly pointing to an imaginary external microphone. namely Microphone 1 or Microphone 2 instead of allowing me to point to the Webcam device itself

Edited by AussieJohn
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Isadora.

In MCC I simply typed in <pulse> and then hit enter and what showed up with the word <pulse> in it I uninstalled. There were only 3 libs that had significant dependency's that I left. That did the trick. I haven't had to make a single setting change to any of the applications that use sound and I have tested them all.

 

By the way, do you have any significant involvement over there at Mageia ??. I have been having trouble trying to log in to Mageia ever since I signed on shortly after it started up. I try to re-register but it tells me that the login name and Internet Address are already registered. But when I type in the user name and say I forgot the password and ask it to send me a new password it tells me that there is no record of the Internet Address. In other words it contradicts itself. I have now sent two emails to the appropriate official but have not had a response. So do you know who in Mageia can resolve this impasse for me, please ??.

 

If I cannot log in then I cannot post, as much as I want to.

 

Cheers. John.

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Thanks for your reply John.

I am going to throw al that Pulse-rubbish away right now.

Never found any advantage.

 

Concerning your Mageia-account: i shall contact the one and only admin, and let you know as soon i hear from him.

By the way: what is your user-name for the Mageia-forum? AussieJohn, i presume?

 

Greetings

 

isadora

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Pulse-less now:

 

Remove 14 packages?

 

- alsa-plugins-pulse-config-1.0.24-1.mga1.x86_64

- gstreamer0.10-pulse-0.10.28-1.mga1.x86_64

- lib64alsa-plugins-pulseaudio-1.0.24-1.mga1.x86_64

- lib64pulsezeroconf0-0.9.22-5.mga1.x86_64

- paprefs-0.9.9-7.mga1.x86_64

- pavucontrol-0.9.10-9.mga1.x86_64

- pulseaudio-0.9.22-5.mga1.x86_64

- pulseaudio-module-gconf-0.9.22-5.mga1.x86_64

- pulseaudio-module-x11-0.9.22-5.mga1.x86_64

- pulseaudio-module-zeroconf-0.9.22-5.mga1.x86_64

- pulseaudio-utils-0.9.22-5.mga1.x86_64

- task-pulseaudio-2010.0-5.mga1.noarch

- vlc-plugin-pulse-1.1.9-4.mga1.tainted.x86_64

- xine-pulse-1.1.19-5.mga1.x86_64

 

0B of additional disk space will be used.

 

Is it ok to continue?

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Yes Pandora, it is AussieJohn. and part of the internet address is @bigpond.net.au so they can track the connection. I don't think I need to expose the whole internet address here.

Thanks for doing this for me.

Cheers. John.

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part of the internet address is @bigpond.net.au so they can track the connection. I don't think I need to expose the whole internet address here.
Yes you do, I can't spam you otherwise..! :P
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I tried constantly mucking around with pulse-audio, trying changes in all the usual places and no matter what I tried, the only success came when I got rid of it and thus was able to make the appropriate single change in Skype.

Interesting fact that my audio throughout the various apps that use audio are working perfectly as I outlined. which leads one to think that pulse-audio is an unnecessary and waste of resource.

As I also said, I believe that sound quality has improved. Unless someone can explain to me how I would be better off with having pulse-audio in my system, not someone elses with perhaps different needs and uses, then I wont even consider reinstalling pulse-audio. I remember way way back during the introduction of pulse-audio that the benefits of the use of pulse-audio was questionable. I now think it is questionable still. It was described as a great way to make a system that was reasonably operable, vastly more complicated for no really proven benefit. I am starting to think that that is still the case.

If that was not the case then how come all my various audio using programs are still working perfectly and even seem to be improved without Pulse-audio ??.

 

Cheers. John.

 

P.S. My webcam has its own inbuilt stereo microphone unlike other webcams that have mono mikes or use external mikes. Pulse-audio was constantly pointing to an imaginary external microphone. namely Microphone 1 or Microphone 2 instead of allowing me to point to the Webcam device itself

 

John, it depends on the distro and their implementation of pulseaudio. I've seen good and bad implementations of it. Admittedly its much better now than it used to be, but there are a still a few issues, the microphone being one. Mostly though, it's OK.

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Yes Pandora, it is AussieJohn. and part of the internet address is @bigpond.net.au so they can track the connection. I don't think I need to expose the whole internet address here.

Thanks for doing this for me.

Cheers. John.

 

Have requested for checking this, you'll here as soon as possible.

 

isadora

Edited by isadora
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Hi Ian.

I just installed Skype on another friends Laptop which is running Mandriva-2010.2 I left pulse-audio as originally set-up and managed to get proper video and sound communication between her laptop and my desktop. I used a version of Skype from MIB namely skype-2.1.0.81-69.1mib2010.1.i686.rpm. I agree with you that there seems to be a difference between Mandriva and Mageia although you wouldn't expect there to be much at this early stage of the fork, would you ?. Yet in the 2010.2, there in the Audio Device selection choice in Skype, there were 5 or 6 choices yet in Mageia there was no choice other than the default whatever that was. and that default just would not work.

 

Use the cli, as root, such as konsole to install and do not the Mageia Control Centre because the nodeps part is very important. there is a deps that is simply not needed for Skype to work.

 

 

rpm -Uvh --nodeps skype-2.1.0.81-69.1mib2010.1.i686.rpm

 

 

I had nothing but problems when trying to use the newer versions of Skype 2.2 and above. They would install OK and you could open Skype OK but 30 seconds or so later it would disappear off the desktop. No error message, no nothing.

The same occurred on two other installs of Mageia that I had setup for my attempts to solve the Microphone problem. The rpm I am presently using is on all three Mageia installs and have worked perfectly on all three.

 

Now to try and get Ekiga to work. Having troubles there but will open a new thread for this if I cannot work it out.

 

Cheers. John.

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