Multimedia Documentation needs improvements
- Reply: Mark Linimon : "Re: Multimedia Documentation needs improvements"
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Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2026 04:59:22 UTC
Hi there, I switched from Gentoo to FreeBSD on my Notebook (Its simply not strong enough to compile) and i did that quite a while ago and wanted to wait before reporting, to flatten out most beginner errors. Pretty sure i am still making errors but i at least wanted to report about my experience with the documentation, especially Multimedia There is a fancy new tool called sndctl which makes things like enabling bit-perfect audio on my DAC much easier. That is cool but i found out about that by reading the 15.0 Release Notes in search for something completely different. Neither the Handbook, nor the sound/mixer man-page mention this tool anywhere, not even in the SEE ALSO section. I think that tool needs some more documentation/advertisement to make it actually findable. Also i was asked by at least 2 People (But im in such circles) about how to enable bit-perfect Audio on FreeBSD, which is insanely easy with sndctl, especially compared to Linux. I think that could be used as a nice example in the manual sndctl bitperfect=1 play.vchans=0 With a warning, that disabling vchans can break sound in some applications. virtual_oss also is mentioned nowhere, i found that by asking AI out of desperation OSS has limited Pipewire support through the pipewire-spa-oss package, i found that by accident because pipewire wasn't working (What some applications want/need) and just searched for pipewire with pkg to see if im missing something. Small things like that. Pretty much most user who migrate from Linux and are used to Multimedia in Linux will stumble upon these, pretty sure. The Multimedia Section also still mentions mplayer, mplayer is basically dead and was superseded by mpv quite a few years ago. I think it should mention mpv and maybe even give a config that is suitable for modern Systems (And prevent errors, espeically with Vulkan) Exmaple from my machine cat .config/mpv/mpv.conf vo=gpu-next hwdec=auto gpu-context=wayland (Given Wayland is used) Those are just a few findings i had but i don't want this to get too long, especially as there might be no interest in implementing any of this at all Best Regards Marcel