Totem Slow in Ubuntu Dapper Drake
If Totem, the GNOME movie player, has been unusually slow for you lately, you might want to try configuring GStreamer (the GNOME multimedia framework) to use ALSA for audio output instead of esd. The following steps should fix your problem:
- Press Alt+F2. This will pop up the run dialog;
- Type “gstreamer-properties” and press enter;
- In the first dropdown list on your screen (Audio → Default Output Plugin → Output) choose ALSA;
- Close and restart Totem.
There’s one caveat though: depending on your sound card you may no longer be able to run multiple audio using applications side by side. E.g., it may no longer be possible to play a song in Muine while you have a movie playing in Totem – even if said movie is paused.
Hopefully GNOME and Ubuntu will switch to the esd-compatible audio server PulseAudio (formerly known as polypaudio) in the near future, and we’ll have no more of this nonsense.