1253296 - glitchy audio during youtube videos on Linux

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1242783

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P2)

Description

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]: glitchy audio on YouTube and other video sites

On my home desktop machine, playing YouTube videos (or anything else, really; videos in tweetstreams, instagram videos, etc.) sounds extremely glitchy, like 1/4-1/2 second of every second is dropped.  VLC plays OK, so I don't think this is a problem with my sound setup.  I bisected this to:

Nightly 12 Jan - good - https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/e790bba372f14241addda469a4bdb7ab00786ab3
Nightly 13 Jan - bad - bad https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/ad1f85f172b7302bef0fa9780df8e2b962780ac6

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/pushloghtml?fromchange=e790bba372f14241addda469a4bdb7ab00786ab3&tochange=ad1f85f172b7302bef0fa9780df8e2b962780ac6

Just looking through the commit lists suggests several possibilities:

- bug 948267
- bug 1239078 (libopus update)
- bug 1190939 (VP9 4:4:4 decoding)
- bug 1235966
- bug 769117 (seems unlikely, as flash doesn't really work on this machine...)

Those are all the ones that look audio related and are non-trivial.

I haven't had issues like this before...and it seems nobody else has either, for a regression that happened a month and a half ago.  Is there anything I can provide that might help in tracking this down?

Comment 1

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

jean-yves, any thoughts here?

Comment 2

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Looks like a recent regression, tracking for 46+.

Comment 3

[Anthony Jones (:ajones, :kentuckyfriedtakahe, :k17e)]

Nathan - can you see if reverting any of those patches fixes the issue?

Comment 4

[JW Wang [:jwwang] [:jw_wang]]

What are the specific youtube URLs with glitchy audio?

Comment 5

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

Can you please provide the linux (e.g.  distribution) version you are using and a link to a video causing the issue?

thanks

Comment 6

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

working here with Ubuntu 15.10 e10s on.= and ffmpeg 2.7.6 (though this doesn't matter with youtube as it would typically use vp9 + opus)

Comment 7

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

(In reply to Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya] from comment #5)
> Can you please provide the linux (e.g.  distribution) version you are using
> and a link to a video causing the issue?

This is on Ubuntu 14.10 in Nightly, e10s on.  Examples of glitchiness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn3tUOJ9yv4
https://www.instagram.com/p/BCbp5sCqq6v/
https://twitter.com/BBAnimals/status/706617186425688064
https://vimeo.com/144499042

That's a representative sample; I haven't found a youtube video that isn't glitchy yet.

Comment 8

[Anthony Jones (:ajones, :kentuckyfriedtakahe, :k17e)]

Just to check - you do have PulseAudio installed, right?

Comment 9

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

(In reply to Anthony Jones (:kentuckyfriedtakahe, :k17e) from comment #8)
> Just to check - you do have PulseAudio installed, right?

Yes.

@nightcrawler:~/tmp$ psgrep pulseaudio
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
froydnj   3729  0.1  0.1 470132  9572 ?        S<l  Feb15  61:05 pulseaudio -D
froydnj   3742  0.0  0.0  98812     0 ?        S    Feb15   0:00 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/gconf-helper

Comment 10

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

Nathan, can you list all the packages you have installed?

In particular ffmpeg one. Did you install 3rd party ones?

Comment 11

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

(In reply to Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya] from comment #10)
> Nathan, can you list all the packages you have installed?

All of the packages would be a pretty big list. :)

> In particular ffmpeg one. Did you install 3rd party ones?

i A chromium-codecs-ffmpeg          - Free ffmpeg codecs for the Chromium Browse
i   ffmpeg                          - Multimedia player, server, encoder and tra
i   ffmpeg2theora                   - Theora video encoder using ffmpeg         
i   ffmpegthumbs                    - video thumbnail generator using ffmpeg    
i   gmerlin-encoders-ffmpeg         - ffmpeg encoders for Gmerlin               
i   gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg            - FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer               
i A libxine1-ffmpeg                 - MPEG-related plugins for libxine1         
i A libxine2-ffmpeg                 - MPEG-related plugins for libxine2         

I do not have any third-party sources in my sources.list.  My Ubuntu repositories are "main restricted multiverse universe", if that makes a difference.

ffmpeg says its version is 0.8.6, but it also says it's a transitional package...libav* shows a number of packages listed, though, do you need versions of any of those?

Comment 12

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

that is weird, 14.04 shipped with LibAV 9.4. 14.10 is supposed to come with LibAV 9.11. How could you still have 0.8.6 (which is the version that shipped with 12.04)

when you right click on the youtube video and select "stats for nerds", what do you get?

Can you uninstall all ffmpeg related codec (including libavcodec* / libavutil*) (can re-install them, for Firefox you just need libavcodec54)

can you run in a debug build with NSPR_LOG_MODULES=MediaFormatReader:5,PlatformDecoderModule:5 and see if there's anything special.

If nothing shows up there, it may be outside of media (like cubeb or something)

Comment 13

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

Stats for nerds says:

Video ID: Xn3tUOJ9yv4
Dimensions: 854 x 480
Resolution: 854 x 480@30
Volume: 100%
Stream Host: r13---sn-vgqs7n7d
Stream Type: https
CPN: AfzgilP7PbizOoJe
Mime Type: video/webm; codecs="vp9"
DASH: yes (244/251)

libav-wise, I have libavcodec5{2,3,4,6} and libavutil5{0,1,2,3}.

I'm a little reluctant to uninstall things because I can't find a 14.10 repository anywhere. :(  I should probably just upgrade...

try built all my bisection candidates; I'll report on those tomorrow.

Comment 14

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

Bisecting shows that bug 948267 was responsible for changing this.

Comment 15

[JW Wang [:jwwang] [:jw_wang]]

Can you run with |NSPR_LOG_MODULES=timestamp:1,MediaDecoder:4,AudioStream:3| and attach the logs? I wonder if there are audio buffer underruns to intermittent silence and glitchy sound.

Btw, it will also help to run firefox under a Ubuntu install disc without actually installing it so you have a clean set of packages to test.

Comment 16

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

Attachment: glitchy audio log as requested in comment 15

Here's a log from playing the first couple seconds of a youtube video.  I see from /proc/maps:

7f1cc5f60000-7f1cc6691000 r-xp 00000000 08:11 140618                     /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec.so.56.1.0
7f1cc6691000-7f1cc6891000 ---p 00731000 08:11 140618                     /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec.so.56.1.0
7f1cc6891000-7f1cc68a9000 r--p 00731000 08:11 140618                     /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec.so.56.1.0
7f1cc68a9000-7f1cc68c3000 rw-p 00749000 08:11 140618                     /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec.so.56.1.0
7f1ccd03a000-7f1ccd05d000 r-xp 00000000 08:11 142492                     /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavutil.so.54.3.0
7f1ccd05d000-7f1ccd25d000 ---p 00023000 08:11 142492                     /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavutil.so.54.3.0
7f1ccd25d000-7f1ccd260000 r--p 00023000 08:11 142492                     /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavutil.so.54.3.0
7f1ccd260000-7f1ccd261000 rw-p 00026000 08:11 142492                     /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavutil.so.54.3.0
7f1cd06f7000-7f1cd0714000 r-xp 00000000 08:11 142494                     /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavresample.so.2.1.0
7f1cd0714000-7f1cd0914000 ---p 0001d000 08:11 142494                     /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavresample.so.2.1.0
7f1cd0914000-7f1cd0917000 r--p 0001d000 08:11 142494                     /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavresample.so.2.1.0
7f1cd0917000-7f1cd0918000 rw-p 00020000 08:11 142494                     /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavresample.so.2.1.0

The mismatch between libavcodec and libavutil isn't problematic, is it?

I found a utopic repository yesterday, so I can try uninstalling and reinstalling things once I get package dependencies figured out.

Comment 17

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

(In reply to Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya] from comment #12)
> when you right click on the youtube video and select "stats for nerds", what
> do you get?
> 
> Can you uninstall all ffmpeg related codec (including libavcodec* /
> libavutil*) (can re-install them, for Firefox you just need libavcodec54)

I uninstalled libavcodec*/libavutil*.  My /proc/maps for plugin-container.exe now says:

7fb134c70000-7fb134c77000 r-xp 00000000 08:12 4063376                    /home/froydnj/firefox/libmozavcodec.so
7fb134c77000-7fb134c80000 ---p 00007000 08:12 4063376                    /home/froydnj/firefox/libmozavcodec.so
7fb134c80000-7fb134ea0000 r-xp 00006000 08:12 4063376                    /home/froydnj/firefox/libmozavcodec.so
7fb134ea0000-7fb13509f000 ---p 00230000 08:12 4063376                    /home/froydnj/firefox/libmozavcodec.so
7fb13509f000-7fb1350ac000 rw-p 00225000 08:12 4063376                    /home/froydnj/firefox/libmozavcodec.so
7fb1350ac000-7fb1350b4000 r-xp 00000000 08:12 4063282                    /home/froydnj/firefox/libmozavutil.so
7fb1350b4000-7fb1350b6000 ---p 00008000 08:12 4063282                    /home/froydnj/firefox/libmozavutil.so
7fb1350b6000-7fb1350e3000 r-xp 00007000 08:12 4063282                    /home/froydnj/firefox/libmozavutil.so
7fb1350e3000-7fb1352e2000 ---p 00037000 08:12 4063282                    /home/froydnj/firefox/libmozavutil.so
7fb1352e2000-7fb1352f3000 rw-p 00033000 08:12 4063282                    /home/froydnj/firefox/libmozavutil.so

and the audio is still quite glitchy.

Comment 18

[JW Wang [:jwwang] [:jw_wang]]

2016-03-10 16:49:49.118092 UTC - [0x7fc6466fc1a0]: W/AudioStream AudioStream 7fc646cc0ce0 lost 4051 frames
2016-03-10 16:49:49.118177 UTC - [0x7fc6466fc1a0]: W/AudioStream AudioStream 7fc646cc0ce0 lost 8184 frames
2016-03-10 16:49:49.118266 UTC - [0x7fc6466fc1a0]: W/AudioStream AudioStream 7fc646cc0ce0 lost 3424 frames
2016-03-10 16:49:49.759698 UTC - [0x7fc6466fc1a0]: W/AudioStream AudioStream 7fc646cc0ce0 lost 4072 frames
2016-03-10 16:49:49.759725 UTC - [0x7fc6466fc1a0]: W/AudioStream AudioStream 7fc646cc0ce0 lost 3740 frames

There is audio buffer underrun. Did you have PulseAudio installed and what is it's version?

Comment 19

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

(In reply to JW Wang [:jwwang] from comment #18)
> There is audio buffer underrun. Did you have PulseAudio installed and what
> is it's version?

Yes; pulseaudio --version says 4.0.

Comment 20

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

(In reply to Nathan Froyd [:froydnj] from comment #16)

> The mismatch between libavcodec and libavutil isn't problematic, is it?

no.. that's how they are numbered; up until very recently the version number of libavutil had no linked to libavcodec so you could have 56 in one and 54 in the other.

With the release of FFmpeg 3.0, they are both 57.

> 
> I found a utopic repository yesterday, so I can try uninstalling and
> reinstalling things once I get package dependencies figured out.

normally, libavcodec shouldn't be used with nightly to play most youtube video as they are webm/vp9 and for which we use our own libmozavcodec.

Comment 21

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

(In reply to Nathan Froyd [:froydnj] from comment #19)
> (In reply to JW Wang [:jwwang] from comment #18)
> > There is audio buffer underrun. Did you have PulseAudio installed and what
> > is it's version?
> 
> Yes; pulseaudio --version says 4.0.

what is the content of :
/proc/asound/card%1/pcm%2p/sub%3/prealloc

where %1 is the audio card number (if you only have one it will be 0)
%2 is the device number
and %3 is the subdevice.

you can get the list of audio device with:
aplay -l
on my Ubuntu 14.04 VM that shows:
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: AudioPCI [Ensoniq AudioPCI], device 0: ES1371/1 [ES1371 DAC2/ADC]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: AudioPCI [Ensoniq AudioPCI], device 1: ES1371/2 [ES1371 DAC1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

so:
here %1 = 0, %2 = %3 = 0
/proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/sub0/prealloc

ALSA default is 4kB but Ubuntu bump that to 64kB. Which is often still too low.

you can bump that to 128 or ever 256 and see how that goes for you.

If you're not sure on which card is being used by pulse, it's safe to bump the prealloc value on all of them.

Does that help?

Comment 22

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

cat /proc/asouns/card1/pcm*p/sub*/prealloc indicates that all of them are set to 256 already.

Comment 23

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

The values for /proc/asound/card0/*, though, are all 64...but those are for HDMI devices, which I don't use.  My speakers are hooked up to card1.

Comment 24

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

and if you set them all to 64 then ? :) just curious

Comment 25

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

the value can be bumped up to 4MB I believe on intel device, so you may wish to up that even more (set it to 4096).

In my past experience, too low prealloc values are typically the cause of underbuffer.
but the underbuffer may be occurring in pulse, in which case changing the alsa HW buffer size will make no difference.

Comment 26

[Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya]]

and what do you have in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf  ?

Comment 27

[JW Wang [:jwwang] [:jw_wang]]

(In reply to Jean-Yves Avenard [:jya] from comment #25)
> the value can be bumped up to 4MB I believe on intel device, so you may wish
> to up that even more (set it to 4096).
> 
> In my past experience, too low prealloc values are typically the cause of
> underbuffer.
> but the underbuffer may be occurring in pulse, in which case changing the
> alsa HW buffer size will make no difference.

The underrun happens in AudioStream which means MDSM doesn't decode as fast as AudioStream(cubeb datacallback) consumes.

Comment 28

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

Attachment: non-glitchy log (with advertisement before youtube video)

For comparison's sake, here's a log from a smoothly playing version, about 10-15 seconds of audio.

Comment 29

[JW Wang [:jwwang] [:jw_wang]]

Can you try if this build works for you?

http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/try-builds/[e-mail]-5b51f42ab5af9bfb2b407d0c121211eaeaefa0b8/try-linux64/

Comment 30

[Nathan Froyd [:froydnj]]

(In reply to JW Wang [:jwwang] from comment #29)
> Can you try if this build works for you?
> 
> http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/try-builds/[e-mail]-
> 5b51f42ab5af9bfb2b407d0c121211eaeaefa0b8/try-linux64/

That build sounds great!  So nice to not have glitchy audio. :)

Comment 31

[Maire Reavy [:mreavy]]

JW -- Can you officially take this bug and put up a patch for review?  Per Nathan, your latest build fixes this bug (which is awesome!).

I realize you're already driving the fix forward, but since this bug is marked as a recent regression introduced in Fx46, it's listed as blocking release and needs an official owner.  Thanks!

Comment 32

[JW Wang [:jwwang] [:jw_wang]]

This bug is the same as bug 1242783 where we have glitchy audio when high latency audio device is used like BT headphone.

Comment 33

[Maire Reavy [:mreavy]]

Thanks, JW.  Does it make sense to close this as a duplicate of Bug 1242783 (since that's where the work is happening)?  Or do you feel more comfortable leaving this open?

Comment 34

[JW Wang [:jwwang] [:jw_wang]]

Sure. Please make it a dup of Bug 1242783. Thanks!

Comment 36

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Fixed in the duplicate.