m4a gstreamer audio in clementine in 15.04

[neltnerb]

I recently installed Ubuntu 15.04 on a new computer with Clementine. It plays mp3 and flac fine, but complains that gstreamer is missing for some m4a audio files. In previous versions I could fix this by installing gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad or similar, but these are installed and it is still not working. Does anyone know how to get gstreamer to properly work with .m4a audio files?

[blm-ubunet]

14.04 can have both gstreamer-0.1 & 1.0 installed at same time.
FWIU Clementine from devs nightly ppa requires gstreamer-1.0.
This has problems with wma & m4a again..
Clementine crashes when gstreamer1.0 chokes on certain wma files.
(Even the windows build has similar problems)

You can test & compare with old gstreamer (from cmd line) with :

gst-launch-0.10 playbin uri=file:///home/johndoe/my-random-media-file.m4a
gst-launch-1.0 playbin uri=file:///home/johndoe/my-random-media-file.m4a

and so at least find some debugging clues in the std-out..

I doubt it is possible to force clementine to use the old gstreamer.
Options are:
- transcode with ffmpeg etc
- play with ffplay or gst-launch-0.10
- find something else..

[neltnerb]

Curious. With gst-launch-0.10, it fails to play.

Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Pipeline is PREROLLING ...
** Message: don't know how to handle audio/x-alac, codec_data=(buffer)00000024616c616300000000000010000010280a0e0200ff000028ae0007ee4e0000ac44, samplesize=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
Missing element: Apple Lossless Audio (ALAC) decoder
ERROR: from element /GstPlayBin:playbin0: You do not have a decoder installed to handle this file. You might need to install the necessary plugins.
Additional debug info:
gstplaybasebin.c(2323): prepare_output (): /GstPlayBin:playbin0
ERROR: pipeline doesn't want to preroll.
Setting pipeline to NULL ...
Freeing pipeline ...

With gst-launch-1.0 it works fine. So I guess that means that gstreamer-1.0 works fine, but gstreamer-0.10 doesn't work and Clementine is using the 0.10 version.

[neltnerb]

Okay, I've confirmed that the issue is that Clementine 1.2.3 uses gstreamer0.10, and that Ubuntu removed the gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg package from the distribution in the last few releases (which is the one used to decode apple lossless audio).

I was able to use this PPA to reinstall the ffmpeg plugin and now it works fine.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/gstffmpeg-keep
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

(Source: http://askubuntu.com/questions/57586...n-ubuntu-14-10)

[mc4man]

Your other choice would be to use the dev ppa for clementine which finally has moved clementine to gsteamer1.0, then you'd get support for .m4a, wma thru the gstreamer1.0-libav plugin. Clementine has taken a long time to move to gst 1.0 & apparently only thru the ppa as it's still on 0.10 in 15.10 & Debian sid though it's next release will be on gst-1.0

https://launchpad.net/~me-davidsanso...clementine-dev

next release change log - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cl...ster/Changelog

[neltnerb]

Glad to hear, I didn't see any indication of gstreamer 1.0 support in clementine. I think for now it's working well enough, but glad to know I won't have to find yet another amarok clone for 15.10!

[blm-ubunet]

@neltnerb
I think your soln is best. None of my old wma files have ever played in latest clementine/gststreamer-1.0 & that's with mc4man's ppa build of gstreamer1.0-libav.

I didn't know about "gstffmpeg-keep" package & did not realize the std packaged release version of clementine was so old. This turns out to be a good thing.

[mc4man]

15.10 may still use the clem w/ 0.10 gst., if that's the case i'll add 15.10 to the gstffmpeg-keep ppa. As of now it does use 0.10

[dave231]

mc4man, pretty new to ubuntu so pardon my ignorance.
Running 15.10 on an intel nuc, the follow fails to fetch on sudo apt-get update:

/dist/wily/main/binary-amd64/Packages
/dist/wily/main/binary-i386/Packages

It is then unable to locate package gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

Any thoughts?

[mc4man]

mc4man, pretty new to ubuntu so pardon my ignorance.
Running 15.10 on an intel nuc, the follow fails to fetch on sudo apt-get update:

/dist/wily/main/binary-amd64/Packages
/dist/wily/main/binary-i386/Packages

It is then unable to locate package gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

Any thoughts?

I never did put up a package for 15.10 & 16.04 will not need it as clementine has moved to gstreamer1.0
Check here in several hours & there should be a package for 15.10 though you move to 16.04 next month or so.
https://launchpad.net/~mc3man/+archi...gstffmpeg-keep