Render Audio on a machine with no sound card

Question

I'm using VSE to create small video clips. I create the clips using python and render everything in the background. Now I am trying to add audio to my clips. This works on my local machine. This is the line I run:

blender -b --python test.py -o //out -a

However, I am trying to run this on a google cloud machine and I get the following error:

AL lib: (WW) alc_initconfig: Failed to initialize backend "pulse"
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4292:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:4292:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:4292:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:4771:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2266:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
AL lib: (EE) ALCplaybackAlsa_open: Could not open playback device 'default': No such file or directory

I think the issue is because there is no sound card on the google cloud machine, and I don't think its possible for me to add one.

Thanks!

EDIT: I'm adding that the above are just warnings. The video is rendered fine, only there is no audio present.

Answer 1

You can do ./blender -noaudio -b --python test.py -o //out -a to get rid of those errors/warnings.

Answer 2

To answer my own question, the way I got around this was to add the audio via FFMPEG. Don't know why Blender cares whether or not there is an Audio Card.