Playing m4a/aac

Zack89 · 2010-01-26 03:55:57

Is there ANY way to play iTunes format songs on Arch? aac or m4a format. Ive tried songbird, amarok, Juk.. nothing will play them. I have loaded all the gstreamer plug ins as well.

skottish · 2010-01-26 04:02:52

gstreamer0.10-bad-plugins should be able to handle it (through FAAD). Not only that, but VLC, Mplayer, and everything else that has a FFmpeg back end should do it too. Are you sure that you installed the gstreamer plug-ins or just the plug-in base? For instance:

gstreamer0.10-bad <<-- Just the base
gstreamer0.10-bad-plugins <<-- The actual plug-ins

PirateJonno · 2010-01-26 05:10:28

if they have DRM (*.m4p) then I don't think there's anything you can do. I play .m4a's fine though, even those bought from the store (with iTunes plus of course). also, i think amarok and juk use xine by default, but I don't know what to do there... try totem maybe or switch your phonon backend to gstreamer

Zack89 · 2010-01-26 06:01:08

Well I got it to work with banshee. But heres a question.. I can import it with banshee and it works and everything.. but with Songbird, only thing i can do is import the songs, I cant do my artwork and they wont play.. Now using a simple Syllogism..
Songbird uses Gstreamer
Banshe plays itunes music and uses Gstreamer
Songbird plays itunes music
This should hold true.. but it doesnt.. if i go into about:gstreamer in songbird it doesnt show support for aac. Why is this?

PirateJonno · 2010-01-26 06:32:30

I'm assuming you installed songbird from the AUR. If so, try and rebuild it now that you have the right plugins installed. If that doesn't work, then it's probably because songbird isn't using the same autodetection method as banshee and most other players. However, I'd be surprised if whatever method they use doesn't support AAC at all (seing as it's basically an iTunes clone). Basically I think songbird is a bad choice to use on linux, the website is so simplified that I couldn't even find a list of supported codecs, and just in general it doesn't seem to be designed with linux in mind. Apparently though there's a quicktime addon, but it should really be able to play AAC files without that...

Zack89 · 2010-01-26 07:08:46

No.. i actually just downloaded the tar ball from songbirds site and i just run a script i linked to the songbird script in the folder so i can run it from desktop.. ill try that.. thanks pirate

PirateJonno · 2010-01-26 07:12:20

oh ok, yeah AUR would be your best bet. I just realised how messed up the packages are there and I'm making my own one now, a source package for the latest stable release

shazeal · 2010-01-26 07:27:11

I use Amarok, I had to install phonon-xine and switch the phonon backend to use Xine since gstreamer would not play them for me.

PirateJonno · 2010-01-26 07:31:34

amarok should definitely be able to play them with gstreamer, so if you're interested I'm sure installing some plugins will work now (although I haven't used amarok for over a year now...)

Zack89 · 2010-01-26 07:43:50

Ok ill see what i can do.. right now im trying to figure out whats wrong with my firefox.. I was messing with qt and gtk settings and.. now firefox isnt running at all.. and i dO NOT like konqueror ><

PirateJonno · 2010-01-26 07:47:49

ok, well it looks like songbird is even more messed up than I thought... apparently it doesn't like to depend on my own version of xulrunner and I'd rather not have two versions installed, so I guess you'll just have to rely on one of the AUR packages

Falldamage · 2010-03-07 16:58:41

I can't seem to get songbird to play my .m4a files either. I just get an error with no more information than that songbird can't play/stream the files. I have the correct plugins, I can play the files through gst-launch-0.10, but I can't get them to work in songbird. I have no idea what the problem is.

Ultraman · 2010-03-10 00:38:42

I just ran into this with Exaile when I dumped some m4a in the playlist. It doesnt play them, stating I do not have the codec.
I installed gstreamer0.10-bad-plugins (I had good and ugly installed so far), but that did not help.
I have faac and faad2 installed as well, mplayer probably dragged them in already.

***
Never mind, I forgot I have Exaile minimize/close to tray. So instead of restarting it after installing gstreamer0.10-bad(-plugins), I was just opening the already running instance. After a proper close and start it plays m4a fine.

Last edited by Ultraman (2010-03-10 00:45:36)

foggybrain · 2010-05-28 15:35:09

SONGBIRD M4A AAC FIX

This fixed m4a/aac (non drm) playback in songbird for me

create a launch script containing this

#!/bin/sh
export SB_GST_SYSTEM=1
songbird

also make sure gstreamer0.10-bad-plugins are installed

Last edited by foggybrain (2010-05-28 17:04:25)

GogglesGuy · 2010-05-28 15:44:32

FYI xine should play them just fine.. (unless it has drm in them of course)

foggybrain · 2010-05-28 16:56:09

Songbird uses gstreamer !

Also make sure your build of ffmpeg has non free and faad enabled

GentooMonk · 2014-03-21 22:31:10

Sorry for bringing an old post back but the solution to playing aac files in Clementine / JuK is by renaming them to m4a.

It took me a while to figure this out, and this is one of the top posts on google search.

jasonwryan · 2014-03-22 09:32:18

Please don't necrobump: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … Bumping.27

Closing

Arch Linux

#1 2010-01-26 03:55:57

Playing m4a/aac

#2 2010-01-26 04:02:52

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#3 2010-01-26 05:10:28

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#4 2010-01-26 06:01:08

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#5 2010-01-26 06:32:30

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#6 2010-01-26 07:08:46

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#7 2010-01-26 07:12:20

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#8 2010-01-26 07:27:11

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#9 2010-01-26 07:31:34

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#10 2010-01-26 07:43:50

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#11 2010-01-26 07:47:49

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#12 2010-03-07 16:58:41

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#13 2010-03-10 00:38:42

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#14 2010-05-28 15:35:09

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#15 2010-05-28 15:44:32

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#16 2010-05-28 16:56:09

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#17 2014-03-21 22:31:10

Re: Playing m4a/aac

#18 2014-03-22 09:32:18

Re: Playing m4a/aac

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