[muskorv]

When I start a movie after XBMC has been idle for a while (don't know how long period of idle it takes or if it's completely random), I get an error message saying "Unable to initialize audio device. Please check the audio settings" and then the movie playback freezes after a couple of seconds.

If I then press stop and toggle between the available Audio Output Devices (Primary Sound Driver or Realtek HDA HDMI Out) in the Audio Hardware settings – I can again play any file without any errors. If I then watch a movie and afterwards let XBMC idle for a couple of hours, the problem will come back and I will have toggle Audio Output Device again.

It doesn't matter if Audio Output is set to Analog or Digital, the problem occurs anyway. I use HDMI to output both video and audio to my TV (Panasonic PX70).

I have this problem with XBMC 8.10 and every Jester SVN-build I have tried (currently using build 17141).

My system:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H (AMD 780G chipset, using onboard Radeon HD3200)
4 GB RAM
Panasonic TH-42PX70 (connected via HDMI)
Windows XP Pro SP3 (32 bit), up to date as of 2009-01-21
Realtek AMD HDMI Audio Device Driver R2.13
ATI Catalyst Driver 8.12

The debug log shows how I start XBMC, play a movie without any problems, let XBMC idle for a while and then unsuccessfully try to play the same movie file again. I highlighted the lines which I guess represents my problem:

http://pastebin.com/f1e815261

Any suggestions how I can resolve this?

[Hando]

Try HDMIOn and if it works map it to your remote.

It's a little app that emulates unplugging/plugging the HDMI cable.

Realtek HDMI audio seems to have this problem.

[muskorv]

Thanks for your reply!

I will try to unplug/plug the HDMI cable next time the error occurs, even though I don't think that this (or emulating it by using HdmiOn) is a better or easier workaround than to toggle the Audio Output Device which I mentioned in my first post.

Also, I doubt that this is a driver problem since other Windows applications seems to be able to idle just fine without any audio issues (as far as I know).

[muskorv]

I just let XBMC idle (not sleep nor hibernate, I just let it do nothing) for a couple of hours to reproduce the problem and then unplug/plug the HDMI cable, but it didn't bring the audio back. I still have to restart XBMC or toggle Audio Output Device.

Any other suggestions?

[muskorv]

Sorry for the monologue, but I did some more testing. The problem with lost audio also occurs if I pause a video for a couple of hours and then try to resume. MKV files or DVD images will then freeze, XviD files plays fine but without audio and if I try to play an MP3 file, nothing happens at all (no reaction in the GUI).

I am also curious to know which driver versions people with the same hardware/motherboard (Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H) are using.

Here's the part of the debug log where I guess things goes wrong (already posted the full log at Pastebin, but I think it's a good idea to post it here as well and make it searchable):

Code:

#
03:57:13 T:2332 M:2513063936   ERROR: CWin32DirectSound::CWin32DirectSound - cannot create secondary (stream)buffer (DSERR_INVALIDPARAM)
#
03:57:13 T:2368 M:2511216640   DEBUG: CThread::staticThread, deleting thread object
#
03:57:13 T:2368 M:2511155200   DEBUG: CThread::staticThread, deleting thread graphic context
#
03:57:13 T:2368 M:2511130624   DEBUG: Thread 2368 terminating
#
03:57:13 T:3720 M:2510884864    INFO: ffmpeg: [h264] Cannot parallelize deblocking type 1, decoding such frames in sequential order
#
03:57:13 T:3720 M:2510548992  NOTICE:  fps: 23.976025, pwidth: 1280, pheight: 720, dwidth: 1280, dheight: 720
#
03:57:13 T:3720 M:2510548992   DEBUG: CDVDPlayerVideo::OutputPicture - change configuration. 1280x720. framerate: 23.98
#
03:57:13 T:3720 M:2510548992  NOTICE: Display resolution AUTO : 1360x768 (Full Screen) (12)
#
03:57:13 T:3720 M:2510548992 WARNING: Upscale: selected algorithm 1
#
03:57:14 T:2332 M:2510553088   ERROR: CThread::staticThread : Access violation at 0x00416d5e: Reading location 0x00000000
#
03:57:14 T:2332 M:2510548992  NOTICE: Closing audio device
#
03:57:14 T:2332 M:2510548992   ERROR: CThread::staticThread : Access violation at 0x00416b4c: Reading location 0x00000000