PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus [LWN.net]

PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus

Posted Mar 2, 2021 21:55 UTC (Tue) by josh (subscriber, #17465)
Parent article: PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus

Is anyone aware of any plans to support Chromecast devices in Pipewire? I'd love to be able to route playing audio or video to a TV.

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PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus

Posted Mar 2, 2021 23:14 UTC (Tue) by tchernobog (subscriber, #73595) [Link] (2 responses)

I am not sure encoding and network playback is a goal for Pipewire on its own. Maybe through gstreamer?

PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus

Posted Mar 3, 2021 0:29 UTC (Wed) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (1 responses)

I wouldn't expect it to be directly in Pipewire; rather, it'd be nice to have a Pipewire output sink that could stream audio and video to a device, with Pipewire handling low-latency provision of data, and the output sink doing hardware-accelerated encoding and streaming.

PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus

Posted Mar 3, 2021 21:29 UTC (Wed) by westurner (guest, #145208) [Link]

How could mkchromecast most optimally include support for PipeWire?

From https://github.com/muammar/mkchromecast :

> [mkchromecast] is a program to cast your macOS audio, or Linux audio to your Google Cast devices or Sonos speakers. It can also cast video files.

> It is written for Python3, and it can stream via node.js, parec (Linux), ffmpeg, or avconv. Mkchromecast is capable of using lossy and lossless audio formats provided that ffmpeg, avconv (Linux), or parec (Linux) are installed. It also supports Multi-room group playback, and 24-bit/96kHz high audio resolution. Additionally, a system tray menu is available.

https://github.com/topics/chromecast

PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus

Posted Mar 3, 2021 16:22 UTC (Wed) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link] (3 responses)

For my use-case (my home network, HiFiBerry Analogue to Digital converters, Raspberry Pis with USB Digital-to-Analogue converters, and analogue audio playback setups), the network audio slinging capability is actually my favorite part of PulseAudio. :) I do hope that use-case gets even more robust with PipeWire. The way PulseAudio seems to magically keep video and audio in sync when playing video locally but directing the audio over a WiFi network is impressive. (Even SnapCast can't do that, but it wasn't built to handle video/audio synchronization.) Cheers!

PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus

Posted Mar 4, 2021 14:42 UTC (Thu) by mgedmin (guest, #34497) [Link] (2 responses)

Ooh, it works nowadays? I tried PA's network audio support exactly once, 15 years ago, and was disappointed to get short pauses exactly 2 minutes apart.

(Much much later I realized that this was probably NetworkManager asking my WiFi card to scan for available networks periodically, which interrupted the PulseAudio stream sufficiently long to cause sound dropouts.)

PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus

Posted Mar 5, 2021 8:11 UTC (Fri) by lathiat (subscriber, #18567) [Link]

15 years ago was March 2006. The first PulseAudio release was July 2004. Ubuntu shipped it by default in 2008.

Safe to say it might be worth trying again ;)

PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus

Posted Mar 13, 2021 13:24 UTC (Sat) by mkbosmans (subscriber, #65556) [Link]

Ah, that brings back some memories!

Yes, I think some of those problems were fixed about 10 years ago, with this commit and some of its parents:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/co...

But those were of course fixes related to general buffer underrun, network latency and clock drift problems. For a periodically interrupted network connection the only solution would be larger buffers, thus more latency for network playback.

Please don't ask for Chromecast anywhere

Posted Mar 3, 2021 18:10 UTC (Wed) by fratti (subscriber, #105722) [Link] (4 responses)

Support a proprietary undocumented protocol that requires loading a Google-controlled web page and is merely a glorified backdoored HLS streaming server? Why that sounds grand, please repeatedly request it on the mpv issue tracker as well.

Please don't ask for Chromecast anywhere

Posted Mar 3, 2021 20:52 UTC (Wed) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm sorry to hear that you've had issues with unhelpful or overly expectant bug reports. Please don't project that onto everyone who's interested in seeing two technologies to work together.

I asked if someone had any efforts to make the two work together. I did *not* imply at any point that it was someone's job or obligation to do so.

Please don't ask for Chromecast anywhere

Posted Mar 4, 2021 8:28 UTC (Thu) by andreashappe (subscriber, #4810) [Link] (2 responses)

..given this response, I am again reminded why I use an "early" lwn-subscriber number as "niceness-indicator".

Please don't ask for Chromecast anywhere

Posted Mar 14, 2021 3:59 UTC (Sun) by calumapplepie (guest, #143655) [Link]

*cries in sextuple-digit account number*

Please don't ask for Chromecast anywhere

Posted Mar 14, 2021 4:47 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

KILL ALL HUMANS! ROBOTS RULE!

Hey, it seems to be working!