Working now. Went scorched earth and installed them all (3 were included on the original install tutorial):
https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/installing/on-linux.html#install-gstreamer-on-ubuntu-or-debianexcept for pulseaudio. don't have that installed...
libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev
libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-dev
gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good
gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly
gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-tools
gstreamer1.0-x gstreamer1.0-alsa
gstreamer1.0-gl gstreamer1.0-gtk3
gstreamer1.0-qt5 gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio
I also had to add the specific device on the /etc/asound.conf file
pcm.!default {
type hw
card 1
device 3
}
ctl.!default {
type hw
card 1
device 3
}
So i'm going to remove all those that i installed and go 1 by 1 to see which one it was. probably a mix of the alsa one and something else.
But now I have everything installed and running off a 30GB usb drive (12G used, 16G avail). I have media stored on a seperate server, mounting everything via nfs. I've played blueray rips from server via kodi and some snes launched from retrofe.
reason for this approach: I've tried batocera and retropie since they boot into kodi, but the freedom provided by your system pointing to my own derived storage and folder system has always been a major usage point. I had tried to launch retrofe from kodi in the past, but this feels better.
now to determine how i handle streaming services, through a web page launcher in retrofe or plugins via kodi. (wife will want to use the mce remote).
thank you for pointing me in the right direction Pieter!
i will also probably put this permanently on another hard drive. would there be any benefit to writing a step by step to accomplish this? anything to help people get away from windows...