Arch Linux

light9876

Member

Registered: 2020-01-05

Posts: 142

[SOLVED] Rhythmbox can't play mp4 files

For some reason Rhythmbox on my Arch can't play mp4 files (it won't even allow me to add them to a playlist)

I've asked the developers of Rhythmbox, and they said I should report it to Arch maintainers:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/rhythmbox/issues/1745

Given that other players like Clementine and Audacious can already do it out-of-the-box, what codecs could be possibly required other than:

    ffmpeg
    faad2
    libde265
    gst-libav
    gst-plugins-base
    gst-plugins-bad
    gst-plugins-good
    gst-plugins-ugly
    gst-plugin-libde265
    gstreamer-vaapi

Thank you.

Last edited by light9876 (2020-01-05 23:57:00)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,104

Re: [SOLVED] Rhythmbox can't play mp4 files

What's your output for

gst-typefind-1.0 $file
gst-discoverer-1.0 $file

?

light9876

Member

Registered: 2020-01-05

Posts: 142

Re: [SOLVED] Rhythmbox can't play mp4 files

gst-typefind-1.0 /home/user/Downloads/random_youtube_video_youtube-dl.mp4

Analyzing file:///home/user/Downloads/random_youtube_video_youtube-dl.mp4
Done discovering file:///home/user/Downloads/random_youtube_video_youtube-dl.mp4

Topology:
  container: Quicktime
    audio: MPEG-4 AAC
    video: H.264 (Constrained Baseline Profile)

Properties:
  Duration: 0:00:44.327000000
  Seekable: yes
  Live: no
  Tags:
      audio codec: MPEG-4 AAC audio
      datetime: 2019-12-08T07:45:52Z
      container format: ISO MP4/M4A
      video codec: H.264 / AVC

gst-discoverer-1.0 /home/user/Downloads/random_youtube_video_youtube-dl.mp4

/home/user/Downloads/random_youtube_video_youtube-dl.mp4 - video/quicktime, variant=(string)iso

Last edited by light9876 (2020-01-05 13:38:40)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,104

Re: [SOLVED] Rhythmbox can't play mp4 files

So you actually have a video here and not an audio file. Extract the audio. You should reformulate your "bug" report that rhythmbox should allow actual video files to be treated as plain audio, though I'd not be surprised if this was considered out of scope and won't fix for rhythmbox.

Last edited by V1del (2020-01-05 14:05:03)

light9876

Member

Registered: 2020-01-05

Posts: 142

Re: [SOLVED] Rhythmbox can't play mp4 files

You have a point, it is not obvious in the gitlab issue.

You can add '.mp4' video files to Audacious and it treats them as if they were audio. So why cannot Rhythmbox do it?

I am aware that I always have the option to extract the audio (I understand by extraction: converting the file to an audio format), but here I am asking if there was a way of playing mp4s without "extracting" the audio.

I will create another issue on gitlab as you suggested.

Last edited by light9876 (2020-01-05 14:45:02)

Slithery

Administrator

From: Norfolk, UK

Registered: 2013-12-01

Posts: 5,776

Re: [SOLVED] Rhythmbox can't play mp4 files

Is not it obvious that I am asking for help playing video files?

No, not at all. You can get audio only mp4 files.

I imagine that this is what the Rythmboxs devs thought you were talking about as well as nowhere in your report did you state it was video files you were having problems with.

---

No, it didn't "fix" anything. It just shifted the brokeness one space to the right. - jasonwryan
Closing -- for deletion; Banning -- for muppetry. - jasonwryan

aur - dotfiles

light9876

Member

Registered: 2020-01-05

Posts: 142

Re: [SOLVED] Rhythmbox can't play mp4 files

Thank you Slithery, I edited my answer 1 minute before you posted yours.

I get the point, you are both right. This is why I created another issue:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/rhythmbox/issues/1747

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,104

Re: [SOLVED] Rhythmbox can't play mp4 files

Assuming you used youtube-dl you can literally tell it to just download the audio track. But yes as expected, this is something rhythmbox devs explicitly don't want to do, and you shouldn't press the issue further.

It's likely trivial to patch this in out-of-tree but I don't have time to look into this further right now.

If your original question was answered please mark as [SOLVED] by editing the title in your first post: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … ow_to_post

light9876

Member

Registered: 2020-01-05

Posts: 142

Re: [SOLVED] Rhythmbox can't play mp4 files

I closed the issue.

But be informed: I am absolutely certain that once 2 years ago I used to be able to add video files to Rhythmbox; I'm just not sure what codecs I had installed.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,104

Re: [SOLVED] Rhythmbox can't play mp4 files

This isn't a problem of codecs, this is a deliberate "valid formats" filtering happening for the playlist/library. I'd assume

gst-play-1.0  /home/user/Downloads/random_youtube_video_youtube-dl.mp4

to work. If it doesn't then you indeed have a codec problem, but you are unlikely to as rhythmbox only accepts audio mimetypes.

Last edited by V1del (2020-01-06 01:48:12)