• Registered: 2011-02-02
  • Posts: 3

Topic: [How-to] Rhythmbox: Playing .m4a files

I just recently migrated from Ubuntu 10.10 to #! and one of the primary functions of a computer is accessing media, so it was necessary to install a decent music player/library.
Installing rhythmbox itself was very simple. Just

sudo apt-get install rhythmbox

then I just added the command, "rhythmbox" to the openbox menu and launched it.

It recognized and added all my files, except for the ones in m4a format. So after searching around for a while I found that the bad gstreamer plugins had codecs for m4a. 

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad

And that solved it. Rhythmbox now plays everything I throw at it.

  • pvsage
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  • From: Section Six
  • Registered: 2009-10-18
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Re: [How-to] Rhythmbox: Playing .m4a files

^ Run `aptitude search gstreamer0.10-plugins` to make sure you also have the "ugly" set installed, although if you can play mp3 files in Rhythmbox it's probably already there.

I'm surprised the "bad" set wasn't automatically pulled in for you - installing Totem pulled in the "good", the "bad", and the "ugly" sets.  But then, .m4a is an mp4 extension, and those codecs are more commonly associated with video...

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  • From: California, USA
  • Registered: 2008-11-29
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Re: [How-to] Rhythmbox: Playing .m4a files

@pvsage - The ugly set is a recommends so it should be installed automatically (with default apt-get settings). However the bad codecs are only suggests hence why they need to be manually installed.

Totem OTOH, has both sets as recommends. I do not know why this difference though.

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  • pvsage
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  • Registered: 2009-10-18
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Re: [How-to] Rhythmbox: Playing .m4a files

^ I think it's because Totem plays videos as well as audio, whereas Rhythmbox only plays audio...unless video functionality has been added in Rhythmbox.  Seems a lot of the "ugly" (poorly supported/maintained) codecs are used for video.

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );