Skype and Google-Talkplugin don't start, may be audio/video config problem

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Sunday 13 November 2011 23:40:59 Mario Storti wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sunday 13 November 2011 16:06:47 Mario Storti wrote:
> >> The only conflict that I note is that when I start a video on YouTube
> >> I can't hear at the sometime music from Amarok for instance. (It's
> >> probably useless anyway, but I report this because normally I could to
> >> that before all this problem started).
> > 
> > This is *not* proper behavior. Pulseaudio should mix audio signals from
> > all sources. You *are* using pulseaudio, right?
> 
> Well, I'm very confused with all the audio stuff: ALSA, PulseAudio,
> Phonon, etc...

It's quite simple, actually. The graphics chain goes like this:

some app (that wants to display a window) talks to:
kwin (the window manager) which talks to:
X11 (the graphics server) which talks to:
intel/radeon/nouveau kernel module (the hardware dirver) which talks to:
graphics hardware.

In complete analogy, the sound chain goes like this:

some app (which wants to play sound) talks to:
phonon (the sound manager) which talks to:
pulseaudio (the sound server) which talks to:
ALSA (the hardware driver) which talks to:
audio hardware.
 
> If I go to "System Settings -> Multimedia -> Phonon" I see only one
> device "Internal Audio Analog Stereo". I think that that means that
> Pulseaudio is OK, right? If I click on `test' I heard correctly the
> sound. If I try to configure the audio through Amarok I get the same.

You can check if pulseaudio is working by playing something in, say, Amarok 
and running top in the console --- pulseaudio should be doing something. 
Alternatively type "ps aux | grep pulseaudio" in the terminal. If it's there, 
you'll see it.

Also, it should be enabled by default, so if you didn't disable it on purpose, 
it should be there.

> BUT, if I have Amarok running, then I have no sound in Firefox, and
> viceversa, if I have Firefox with a video running, then if I launch
> Amarok the audio is stopped, and no audio comes from Amarok, only from
> Firefox.

Both firefox (I guess you actually mean flash-player) and Amarok should be 
configured to use pulseaudio for this to work properly. This is basically 
configured by default, unless you have some weird config inherited from the 
previous Fedora.

I am not sure why it doesn't work for you. Maybe it is something weird related 
to flash player or whatever. If everything else works and if you can live with 
it, leave it be (until you decide to do a clean install sometime in the 
future...).
 
> Thanks a lot for your time. I think that I'm closer now, if I can get
> the audio correctly in the alternate user (mstorti2) then I will
> switch all my stuff to it, and I think almost all my problems are
> solved.

Well, I guess that's probably the easiest way to solve (actually, work around) 
the problem. :-)

Best, :-)
Marko