Bug 1000479

Created attachment 789606 [details]
tvtime station list

Hi,
  this is usually a configuration issue: tvtime itself does nothing with the sound -- it can only control the mixer device.

The usual setup for analogue TV cards is to have them connected (with a cable) to the line-in of the "regular" sound card.  And then tvtime only controls volume of the particular device.  You can try to figure out which one it is using alsamixer or some similar utility and then set the tvtime's configuration accordingly.

Were you able to fix the issue?

The card I am using does is capable of providing sound on another system. See bug 1000490. I am trying to run on an F18 system. With the USB card inserted, I can see it as an imput device in the Volume Control panel. After starting tvtime, I can see the sound in the sound bar, but nothing comes from the speakers.

I have the following directories:
"$ ls -l /dev/snd
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root      100 Sep  5 18:59 by-path
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  4 Sep  5 18:58 controlC0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  8 Sep  5 18:58 controlC1
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 10 Sep  5 18:59 controlC2
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  3 Sep  5 18:58 hwC0D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  7 Sep  5 18:58 hwC1D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  2 Sep  5 18:58 pcmC0D3p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  6 Sep  5 18:58 pcmC1D0c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  5 Sep  5 18:58 pcmC1D0p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  9 Sep  5 18:59 pcmC2D0c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116,  1 Sep  5 18:58 seq
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 33 Sep  5 18:58 timer
$ ls -l /dev/snd/by-path
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep  5 18:58 pci-0000:00:01.1 -> ../controlC0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep  5 18:59 pci-0000:00:12.2-usb-0:3 -> ../controlC2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep  5 18:58 pci-0000:00:14.2 -> ../controlC1
$"

Maybe a form of the entries from here in my $HOME/.tvtime/tvtime.xml would help, but I can't see the correspondence.

I'm also seeing frame drops when I use the -s switch in tvtime.

If your card is similar to my old one then the sound device on the TV card is for recording only.  Something must "route" the sound from the TV card to the sound card you have the speakers connected to.  Unfortunatelly -- tvtime can't do this, other applications might be able to do that.  It's actually more CPU intensive and in the end you only get the same analogue signal that came through the antenna input...

You may try to record some sound during TV playing with arecord to verify this.  Then it might be possible (never tried) to setup asoundrc to do the routing for you (or use sox as a daemon or a similar hack).

Regards.

I was able to get sound with audacity. When I tried to use play /dev/snd/<devices added when inserting the the TV card>, I got
"$ sox -d /dev/snd/pcmC1D0c
sox FAIL formats: can't determine type of `/dev/snd/pcmC1D0c'
$ sox -d /dev/video1
sox FAIL formats: can't determine type of `/dev/video1'"

Tried with arecord briefly, but couldn't get any sound. At least I can now watch TV with sound with tvtime, even if it means starting audacity, selecting the card's sound output, and going to record/pause to save disk space.

Based on the comment #6: this really seems to be a configuration issue -- if the sound comes in and is not routed propoerly to the output, it is not a tvtime's fault.