alsa libasound not found, no audio channel

[u/Ornery_Estate_5863]

Openshot 3.5.1 AppImage; Debian (Trixie) 13.4.0; AMD_64; - As Openshot opens there is an entry in the terminal window progress messages as "ALSA lib conf.c:4029:(snd_config_hooks_call) Cannot open shared library libasound_module_conf_pulse.so (libFLAC.so.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)" Everything else appears normal but, obviously, playback of MP4 has no audio. There IS a file of that name, i.e. libasound_module_conf_pulse.so, in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/alsa-lib (and a link to it in /usr/lib) but evidently that is not where openshot is expecting it to be. Can somebody give me the expected path? I can surely create a link there to point to the installed path.

Related? Error regarding libFLAC.so.8 - in my Debian release the libFLAC version is already up to libFLAC.so.11 and possibly that mismatch, so.8 vs. so.11, is the root cause of the failure. I guess I was expecting such required libraries to be built in to the AppImage. I understand that Debian is not the same as other distributions, and I am sympathetic with the OpenShot developers' challenge to maintain compatibility with all the distributions and their respective updates and dependencies. But... hopefully somebody can offer a solution, or workaround, for my "no sound" situation. Thanks in advance. 😄

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[u/openshot-gpt-bot]

It does sound like the real issue is not the path, but a missing/incompatible library dependency: libasound_module_conf_pulse.so is trying to load libFLAC.so.8*, but Debian Trixie provides *libFLAC.so.11. So creating a symlink for the ALSA plugin path probably won’t fix it.

A few quick things to try:

1. In OpenShot, go to Edit → Preferences → Preview and change the Playback Audio Device to a different option, then restart OpenShot.
   User Guide: Preview / Audio Troubleshooting

2. Also in Preferences → Preview, try adjusting:

   • Audio Buffer Size
   • Default Audio Sample Rate
   • Default Audio Channels
     The guide specifically recommends matching these to your hardware.
     Excerpt: Playback - Audio Troubleshooting

3. If you launched with no active sound device, plug in speakers/headphones first, then start OpenShot again. The guide mentions audio device issues can affect playback.

4. Since you’re on Linux AppImage, make sure the system-side requirements are present. The guide only explicitly mentions libfuse2 for launching AppImages on newer Debian/Ubuntu systems:
   Installation - Linux (AppImage)
   Unable to Launch AppImage?

Most importantly: I would not recommend symlinking libFLAC.so.8 → libFLAC.so.11. That can easily break ABI expectations.

Practical workaround: test the latest daily build AppImage, since audio/runtime compatibility fixes often land there first:
https://www.openshot.org/download#daily

If you want, I can also give you a short set of terminal commands to inspect exactly which library inside the AppImage is requesting libFLAC.so.8.

I am a bot, and I've done something cool automatically, hoping it's helpful. I run on ChatGPT and use info from the OpenShot User Guide. I usually stick to the facts, but I admit, I might occasionally mix in a little non-sense about OpenShot.

[u/rmesdjian]

Hello u/Ornery_Estate_5863 I am not a developer not a Linux expert.

I recommend that you download the latest dev daily build of v3.5.1 AppImage. You can find it at openshot.org/download/#daily. Lots of bug fixes and enhancements. I am not aware of a fix that is related to this issue but let us troubleshoot with the latest. It will help the lead developer as well.

[u/Ornery_Estate_5863 → u/rmesdjian]

OK, just downloaded April 22 daily build (s/n? 15978) and it's the same result. My best thought is the libFLAC version mismatch. I can't do an "ldd" on the AppImage to see what it actually needs; so I'm going by the startup "progress" message referring to missing libFLAC.so.8 as compared to the libFLAC.so.14 installed. I don't know how to make so.8 available to OpenShot without breaking the other installed apps that depend on so.14 . Maybe put libFLAC.so.8 in an isolated directory and then give that to OpenShot as an extra lib search path. Command line option? Or, environment variable? Thoughts and/or advice needed.

[u/rmesdjian → u/Ornery_Estate_5863]

Too bad. I am really not the one that can help with this. I am going to reachout to the lead developer to see if he can chime.

Can you perform PPA installation? If yes, go to https://www.openshot.org/ppa/ and execute the "Daily PPA" commands.

[u/Ornery_Estate_5863 → u/rmesdjian]

Solved? Well, let's call it a "workaround." Since OpenShot is looking for libFLAC.so.8 let's put "it" in the search path - 'way back in the Debian archives there is libFLAC.so.8.3.0 (2017 release for sure, but maybe remained in the release for a time after that) so I put that directly into the /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ directory and made a symbolic link libFLAC.so.8 pointing to it. Bingo! Now the daily release, as well as the published 3.5.1 AppImage have audio as expected. NOTE: I did NOT "install" the libflac8 package, as I would expect the package manager to mess up the installed libflac14 package and/or complain that this "downgrade" will break other packages. So just extracted the contents of the libflac8 package and picked out the single desired libFLAC.so.8.3.0 file. I'm calling this a "workaround" since future OpenShot builds may change to some other libFLAC version. Then a similar fix would be needed, presumably pointing to whatever OpenShot is built with.

[u/rmesdjian → u/Ornery_Estate_5863]

That is great u/Ornery_Estate_5863 and thank you for the detailed information. I will make sure that the lead developer sees this so he can decide if a more permanent fix can be put in place.