i am using fedora 42 workstation , sometimes when i play a video using mpv , there’s no sound from speakers , then i have to go to gnome sound setting to unmute it , i don’t mute it , it happens randomly , i don’t know whats causing this behavior , could it be because of updating from 41 to 42
Edit 1- okay so i have noticed this one pattern which is repeating again and again , if i start pc and just play video with mpv , it works as it should , with sound but when i restart pc and after booting up , if i fisrt start gnome web browser and surf youtube , then later if i try to play same video file with mpv , no sound , then i have to go to gnome sound setting / voulme level then unmute it from there as shown in this attached screenshot, it’s not the case with firefox , it’s a conflict between gnome web browser and mpv
Maybe you could try adding a default volume to the mpv config?
Create a ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf file and add the line volume=your_desired_volume . For example, to set the default volume to 50%, you would add volume=50
in fedora gnome , mpv’s volume and the volume level setting which is visible in above screenshot both works independently , means even if i set 50% volume in mpv config that will still be there as it is but still mpv will remain muted until i unmute it from setting/sounds/volume level , its not the same for firefox , in firefox if i am watching a video in youtube , that volume and volume under setting/sounds/volume_level ,these are connected unlike mpv’s
mpv is installed as native , and i primarily use mpv for all type of files as i encounter issues with totem or with clapper , like this webm video file which i had downloaded via video downloader , totem and clapper are not able to play this file and give this error shown in the screenshot, so mpv is my default for all type of files as it just works and i am satisfied with it , just this one bug that i have created this post is bothering me , i have necessary codecs installed in my system as suggested via fedora docs
Totem and Clapper both use the Gstreamer backend which is installed by default on Gnome, MPV uses FFmpeg. You are probably missing the right Gstreamer libraries to play that codec.
MPV is great though and i use it too. I haven’t encounted the audio muting issue so i’m not sure what could be causing that.
I experienced the same issue on Fedora Silverblue 41 but with VLC and Brave browser, it seems like when the sound plays in a browser then video player is muted, in my case VLC. VLC was installed as native and the browser was installed from Flathub. Anyways, right now I’m using custom audio sink by JamesDSP which is also available in Flathub and this issue has disappeared long time ago. So I didn’t investigate it much since everything works fine now but the issue is probably related to the default audio output processing for some apps. Since upgrading to Fedora 42 I haven’t noticed any issues with the sound. Also, using VLC or SMPlayer with mpv engine both installed from Flathub now don’t cause any issues whatsoever.
