Having just updated my systems I have been trying to use skype with an USB webcam having its own microphone under KDE. The skype app only sees the PulseAudio device and cannot select the USB webcams mic from its options menu. This used to work some time in the past (F10 rather than F12 ?). Also the KDE "System Settings/Multimedia" screen only shows the "PulseAudio Sound Server".
paman shows the USB webcam mic is present.
How to I get Skype to use my USB webcams mic ?
On 12/30/2009 03:13 PM, Terry Barnaby wrote:
Having just updated my systems I have been trying to use skype with an USB webcam having its own microphone under KDE. The skype app only sees the PulseAudio device and cannot select the USB webcams mic from its options menu. This used to work some time in the past (F10 rather than F12 ?). Also the KDE "System Settings/Multimedia" screen only shows the "PulseAudio Sound Server".
paman shows the USB webcam mic is present.
How to I get Skype to use my USB webcams mic ?
make a file called ~/.pulse/client.conf
in it put...
autospawn = no
then killall pulseaudio or pulseaudio -k
then it'll see all your devices
but change autospawn to yes afterwards for normal pulseaudio behaviour
Martin
On 01/01/2010 05:22 PM, Martin Airs wrote:
On 12/30/2009 03:13 PM, Terry Barnaby wrote:
Having just updated my systems I have been trying to use skype with an USB webcam having its own microphone under KDE. The skype app only sees the PulseAudio device and cannot select the USB webcams mic from its options menu. This used to work some time in the past (F10 rather than F12 ?). Also the KDE "System Settings/Multimedia" screen only shows the "PulseAudio Sound Server".
paman shows the USB webcam mic is present.
How to I get Skype to use my USB webcams mic ?
make a file called ~/.pulse/client.conf
in it put...
autospawn = no
then killall pulseaudio or pulseaudio -k
then it'll see all your devices
but change autospawn to yes afterwards for normal pulseaudio behaviour
Martin
Thanks for the info, but I am trying to do this in the "proper" way using PulseAudio rather than reverting to direct Alsa access (if possible :) ). Also my kids may have problems using this method.
On 01/01/2010 05:34 PM, Jud Craft wrote:
How to I get Skype to use my USB webcams mic ?
GNOME should allow you to choose which device for speaker input.
Doesn't the webcam mike show up under Sound Properties (right click on speaker in bar)?
Yes, it does work under Gnome, however we use KDE. There does not seem to be away in KDE of setting which devices are used by the pulseaudio default sound device. Also the applications, such as Skype, only sees the PulseAudio sound device and so cannot choose a specific input or output device.
Actually does the design of PulseAudio allow an application to choose to use a specific input/output device ? If not I would consider this a major failing ....
On 01/01/2010 05:57 PM, Terry Barnaby wrote:
On 01/01/2010 05:34 PM, Jud Craft wrote:
How to I get Skype to use my USB webcams mic ?
GNOME should allow you to choose which device for speaker input.
Doesn't the webcam mike show up under Sound Properties (right click on speaker in bar)?
Yes, it does work under Gnome, however we use KDE. There does not seem to be away in KDE of setting which devices are used by the pulseaudio default sound device. Also the applications, such as Skype, only sees the PulseAudio sound device and so cannot choose a specific input or output device.
Actually does the design of PulseAudio allow an application to choose to use a specific input/output device ? If not I would consider this a major failing ....
yes if you open pavucontrol
you can select in there the input device and output device
Terry Barnaby wrote:
On 01/01/2010 05:34 PM, Jud Craft wrote:
How to I get Skype to use my USB webcams mic ?
GNOME should allow you to choose which device for speaker input.
Doesn't the webcam mike show up under Sound Properties (right click on speaker in bar)?
Yes, it does work under Gnome, however we use KDE. There does not seem to be away in KDE of setting which devices are used by the pulseaudio default sound device.
2 ways, 1. use pavucontrol 2. updating to https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F12/FEDORA-2009-13296 should make all media devices visible in systemsettings->multimedia
-- Rex
On 01/01/2010 06:57 PM, Rex Dieter wrote:
Terry Barnaby wrote:
On 01/01/2010 05:34 PM, Jud Craft wrote:
How to I get Skype to use my USB webcams mic ?
GNOME should allow you to choose which device for speaker input.
Doesn't the webcam mike show up under Sound Properties (right click on speaker in bar)?
Yes, it does work under Gnome, however we use KDE. There does not seem to be away in KDE of setting which devices are used by the pulseaudio default sound device.
2 ways,
- use pavucontrol
- updating to
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F12/FEDORA-2009-13296 should make all media devices visible in systemsettings->multimedia
-- Rex
Installing pulseaudio* from updates-testing fixed this. Thanks for this :)
On the second question, does the design of PulseAudio allow an application, on an application by application basis, to choose to use a specific input/output device ? If not I would consider this a major failing ....
I would have thought that PulseAudio would, in effect, publish all of the available Alsa audio devices along with default. An application would then connect to default by default which would use the standard PulseAudio configuration but could use any of the other devices including other pulseaudio servers over the network. Each of these devices would be handled by PulseAudio (ie sound would pass through PulseAudio to/from the device in question).
On Friday 01 January 2010 21:35:05 Terry Barnaby wrote:
On the second question, does the design of PulseAudio allow an application, on an application by application basis, to choose to use a specific input/output device ? If not I would consider this a major failing ....
Of course, it wouldn't be of much use otherwise, right? :-) This is why it was written in the first place (among other reasons, like networked audio and such).
I would have thought that PulseAudio would, in effect, publish all of the available Alsa audio devices along with default. An application would then connect to default by default which would use the standard PulseAudio configuration but could use any of the other devices including other pulseaudio servers over the network. Each of these devices would be handled by PulseAudio (ie sound would pass through PulseAudio to/from the device in question).
Not completely sure, but the way I understand pulseaudio works is that it does *not* publish available Alsa devices to the application. If all the sound passes through the server, there is not much point for the app to know which device is going to be used for playing and recording. The app only sees pulseaudio input and output, and uses that. So which app uses which alsa devices is configured within pulseaudio (using pavucontrol), rather than in the app itself.
This is not the question of available functionality, but rather where the controls reside. It is similar to the functionality of an X server --- once a new app is started and it tries to draw its own window on the screen, it is not up to this app to decide where exactly will the window be drawn, but rather it is up to the window manager. It's window may be moved around, minimized, maximized, covered by another one, on this or that desktop, etc., and all this is done transparently, without the app knowing much about it.
The same thing is with audio server (of course, it's much simpler due to its nature) --- app talks to pulseaudio and says "I want to play something and record something", and the pulseaudio is the one to decide what will be the actual source and sink used for each particular app. So just like when you want to move the window around you give instructions to the window manager and *not* the app itself, so also when you choose this or that audio source/sink you give instructions to pulseaudio and *not* the app itself.
Finally, keep in mind that a proper audio server is there to enhance functionality, not to reduce it. :-)
HTH, :-) Marko
On 01/01/2010 06:57 PM, Rex Dieter wrote:
Terry Barnaby wrote:
On 01/01/2010 05:34 PM, Jud Craft wrote:
How to I get Skype to use my USB webcams mic ?
GNOME should allow you to choose which device for speaker input.
Doesn't the webcam mike show up under Sound Properties (right click on speaker in bar)?
Yes, it does work under Gnome, however we use KDE. There does not seem to be away in KDE of setting which devices are used by the pulseaudio default sound device.
2 ways,
- use pavucontrol
- updating to
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F12/FEDORA-2009-13296 should make all media devices visible in systemsettings->multimedia
-- Rex
I just tried to update my other systems to pulseaudio-0.9.21-2.fc12. However this seems to have disappeared from updates-testing and been replaced by pulseaudio-0.9.20-1.fc12 ... Has someone built the latest package with the wrong version number ?
On Sat, Jan 2, 2010 at 7:35 AM, Terry Barnaby terry1@beam.ltd.uk wrote:
On 01/01/2010 06:57 PM, Rex Dieter wrote:
Terry Barnaby wrote:
On 01/01/2010 05:34 PM, Jud Craft wrote:
How to I get Skype to use my USB webcams mic ?
GNOME should allow you to choose which device for speaker input.
Doesn't the webcam mike show up under Sound Properties (right click on speaker in bar)?
Yes, it does work under Gnome, however we use KDE.
There does not seem to be away in KDE of setting which devices are used by the pulseaudio default sound device.
2 ways,
- use pavucontrol
- updating to
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F12/FEDORA-2009-13296 should make all media devices visible in systemsettings->multimedia
-- Rex
I just tried to update my other systems to pulseaudio-0.9.21-2.fc12.
However this seems to have disappeared from updates-testing and been replaced by pulseaudio-0.9.20-1.fc12 ... Has someone built the latest package with the wrong version number ?
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=3527
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Jud Craft -
Marko Vojinovic -
Martin Airs -
Paulo Cavalcanti -
Rex Dieter -
Terry Barnaby