MPlayer Plays Video too Fast When "pcm_u8" Audio Codec Used

Question

Running SMPlayer as my MPlayer (version svn 34540 (Debian Wheezy)) front end.

I have two .avi video files. Both are identical to each other except for the audio codecs used (FYI, both use the "mpeg4 (Simple Profile)" video codec). One file uses the "pcm_u8" audio codec and one uses the "adpcm_im_wav" audio codec. Note that the codec nomenclatures reported here are those reported by the avprobe command.

SMPlayer (and MPlayer) play the video file with said "adpcm_im_wav" audio codec just fine. However, when these players are used to play the video file with said "pcm_u8" audio codec, the video track plays faster than does the audio track. Note that said problem is not a bias-related problem, it is a rate-related problem...

It is interesting to note that both videos play fine using Parole (v. 0.2.0.2 (Debian Squeeze)). FYI, Parole is a front end for the GStreamer framework.

Any ideas as to what the problem may be?

Answer 1

There is one more option to try:

mplayer -autosync 30 -mc 2.0

These options will instruct mplayer to use A/V correction algorithm for video processing in pretty free way without strict limitations. Worked pretty good for me, when I had similar issue.

Answer 2

As a workaround for the above-stated problem, I use the following switch for MPlayer:

-fps 26.97

This value was arrived at via trial and error. The subject video plays fine when said switch is utilized.

However, it may be interesting to note that, after merging two of these "problem" avi files (using avimerge utilizing the -c switch), I had to use an fps setting of 32.97 in order to get good playback with MPlayer.