Saturday, May 11, 2013

Monitor out of range

I was running a live cd and was getting monitor out of range on my old CPU with Samsung Monitor.
I browsed through the net and found several solution like adding vesa 800X600 or GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 to the grub.
But none of these worked. Finally I found the solution and it is quite simple. Add "nomodeset" to the grub options.

If the grub boot command looks like this:

linux /vmlinuz-3.6.7-4.fc16.x86_64 root=UUID=0572d37f-cce7-4626-970d-e8d9b0fd5cc4 ro rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0 KEYTABLE=us quiet SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb rd.luks=0 LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Add nomodeset after vmlinuz

linux /vmlinuz-3.6.7-4.fc16.x86_64 nomodeset root=UUID=0572d37f-cce7-4626-970d-e8d9b0fd5cc4 ro rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0 KEYTABLE=us quiet SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb rd.luks=0 LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Press enter to boot.

It works for fedora/ubuntu. And should work for other distros as well.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Audio distorted in VLC on Linux

Update: Follow the steps on this website instead. This fixes issues with skype as well. The below mentioned procedure hinders two different applications to use the audio device at the same time.

If you are facing audio distortion in VLC on Linux. Follow the below mentioned steps.
In some cases the audio is distorted from the start, in other cases, the audio distortion starts when on fast forwards.

1. Press Ctrl + P (or go to Tools and select Preferences)
2. At the bottom of the window, there is option "Show settings", select "All"

3. In Audio
    In Output modules
        Select Audio output module: "ALSA audio output"

4. In Output module
        In ALSA
            Select the "Audio output device"
                 A list of devices is shown, select the default audio device
         

4. Save
5. Close VLC
6. Open VLC again and try again.

Note:  Selecting the default audio device worked for me. If it doesn't work, you can try with others. Just  remember to save, close and open VLC again.

If this doesn't solve your problem, try one of the things suggested here.



Audio distorted in VLC on windows

If you are facing audio distortion in VLC on windows. Follow the below mentioned steps.
In some cases the audio is distorted from the start, in other cases, the audio distortion starts when on fast forwards.

1. Press Ctrl + P (or go to Tools and select Preferences)
2. At the bottom of the window, there is option "Show settings", select "All"

3. In Audio
    In Output modules
        Select Audio output module: "DirectX audio output"
4. Save
5. Close VLC
6. Open VLC again and try again.

Note: In some cases, audio mode "Win32 waveOut" works better

If this doesn't solve your problem:
Read
1. http://wiki.videolan.org/WindowsFAQ-2.0.x#Crackles.2C_pops.2C_hizzes_and_other_audio_anomalies
2. http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?p=339577#p339577