For ao_pulse, the current latency is not a good indicator of how soon
the AO requires new data to avoid underflow. Add an internal pipe that
can be used to wake up the input loop from select(), and make the
pulseaudio main loop (which runs in a separate thread) use this
mechanism when pulse requests more data. The wakeup signal currently
contains no information about the reason for the wakup, but audio
buffers are always filled when the event loop wakes up.
Also, request a latency of 1 second from the Pulseaudio server. The
default is normally significantly higher. We don't need low latency,
while higher latency helps prevent underflows reduces need for
wakeups.
Compiling with full features requires development files for several
external libraries. Below is a list of some important requirements. For
more information see the output of './configure --help' for a list of options,
or look at the list of enabled and disabled features printed after running
'./configure'. If you think you have support for some feature installed
but configure fails to detect it, the file config.log may contain information
about the reasons for the failure.
Libraries specific to particular video output methods
(you'll want at least one of VDPAU, GL or Xv):
- libvdpau (for VDPAU output, best choice for NVIDIA cards)
- libGL (OpenGL output)
- libXv (XVideo output)
general:
- libasound (ALSA audio output)
- various general X development libraries
- libfreetype
- libfontconfig
- libass
- FFmpeg libraries (libavutil libavcodec libavformat libswscale libpostproc)
Most of the above libraries are available in suitable versions on normal
Linux distributions. However FFmpeg is an exception (distro versions may be
too old to work at all or work well). For that reason you may want to use
the separately available build wrapper that first compiles FFmpeg libraries
and libass, and then compiles the player statically linked against those.