Mageia forum

I am not a Linux programmer, and mostly a Windows guy, which means I have no patience or skill for writing up code to make a computer do a job.

I have no sound on the 2014 edition of Mageia for videos or audio files that I have downloaded, instead I get an error message saying I don't have the right codecs. Most of these files are going to be mp3, mp4, flv or wav. This is peculiar because I get youtubes just fine.

My preference is vlc, but I will use whatever software there is if it will work properly.

Would someone walk me through the uploading of the correct drivers/codecs start to finish, premising instructions on the assumption I have never ever used "terminal" or "Konsole" before and I have no idea what drake, rpm, sodu or anything else mean or do? Thank you.

I will note in passing that the computer is an HP with 1 G RAM and a dual core processor. It is a few years old, but seems to work fine. I am using headphones rather than speakers, and plugging them into the front.

See https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Install_and_remove_software_for_beginner for a simple guide to installing software in Mageia. Type "vlc" in the "Find" box of the software installer GUI, scroll down, and you will find the "vlc" package. Select the i586 version if you are running the 32-bit version of Mageia or x86_64 if you are running the 64-bit version.

A lot of codecs are covered by patents, which make them illegal to use in some countries. Mageia keeps such packages in a separate "tainted" repository to give the user the choice of whether or not to install such software. If you want/need to use any of these codecs, you will have to enable use of the "tainted" repository. For a description of how to set up the software installer to use other repositories, see https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Software_management.

P.S. 1GB of RAM may be a little low for running a heavyweight desktop like KDE or GNOME. If you find the computer gets sluggish when running applications, you may want to investigate one of the other desktops. See https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Desktop_environments for some options.

The advice did not help.

I went to control center, added as repositories "Tainted updates (distrib 3)" and "Tainted 32bit updates (distrib 6)," and added about as many of the other repositories as the system would allow, searched for the term mp4, and installed every repository program whose name remotely suggested it had anything to do with audio. Then I updated everything.

Then I went looking for anything that included the letters mpeg, which is what my error message on the Video player program said it was missing so it could not play the audio portion on a *.mp4. Then I installed all of those programs and updated them too.

I also installed a new vlc from tainted.

All told, about an hour and a half, and about 1.5 gigabytes downloaded and about 1 full gigabyte of hard drive space newly occupied. I rebooted a couple of times along the way.

Then still nothing. Stone silence on my downloaded videos.

When I tried playing an *.mp4 downloaded youtube video using "Videos," the from-the-box player, the error message I get is I am missing an MPEG-AA4 decoder plug-in, which I was then prompted to search for. A long, long first search ended in a hang. Then a long, long second search (I wish I knew where it was searching) yielded no message or sound, just a blank spot where an error message probably should have been, a gray box but without a message, so I assume it was a different kind of crash. When I subsequently tried an *.flv on Video, I again got no sound and the blank box but no prompt for a search.

I later rebooted, retried my *.mp4, and searched again.

Could not find plug-in in any configured software source.

Then I tried my *.flv, and got no error message or sound.

The error message from the new tainted VLC for both the *.mp4 and the *.flv videos was,

No suitable decoder module: VLC does not support the audio or video format "mp4a". Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this.

With Dragon Player, no error message or sound with either *.mp4 or *.flv.

I know my audio card works because I can hear streaming youtubes just fine, and I have plenty of system sounds.

Please advise if I am doing something wrong, or if I need a different player, or if Mageia simply doesn't have the capacity to play audio on stored files.

Thanks.

Eureka, now I have found at least part of the answer.

The reply poster missed a step: in the configure media step, I should have added as a repository the most recent version of tainted, which is shown as distribution 93, as opposed to the HTTP listing which appears at the top, which is only distribution 3.

With this change, VLC will play *.mp4, though it will still not play *.flv, and neither Dragon nor Videos will play anything.

I subsequently added some more tainted media sources and as many other sources listed as distributions or debugs as there were, and I again updated everything.

Now Dragon will play *.mp4, but still will not play *.flv, and neither will VLC. Videos still gives me a message saying no configured source has a plug in for *.mp4, and no message or sound for an *.flv.

It is a start at least, but it is surprising that it is so complicated and labor intensive to get even this far.

please post a link to some of the .flv and .mp4 files that wont play for you for a comparison.

I am running KDE Mga4-64 with enabled online media:

Code: Select all

Core Release
Core Updates
Nonfree Release
Nonfree Updates
Tainted Release
Tainted Updates
Core 32bit Release
Core 32bit Updates
Nonfree 32bit Updates
Nonfree 32bit Release
Tainted 32bit Release
Tainted 32bit Updates

one each only, and all from the first 39 suggested, and have had no problems.

benmc wrote: please post a link to some of the .flv and .mp4 files that wont play for you for a comparison.

I can't list my files as they are confidential.

But I can say, strangely, having not done any more work on ths since my last post, I can get full audio on both *.flv and *.mp4 with either VLC or Dragon, and I can get *.flv on Video, though still no *.mp4 on Video, but as long as I am good with one or more apps, I am satisfied.

I wonder why it suddenly works having done nothing for a couple of days. I hope it stays functioning.

Thanks for your help from down under.

totalnoob1 wrote:I went to control center, added as repositories "Tainted updates (distrib 3)" and "Tainted 32bit updates (distrib 6)," and added about as many of the other repositories as the system would allow, searched for the term mp4, and installed every repository program whose name remotely suggested it had anything to do with audio. Then I updated everything.

You will need Tainted Release and Tainted 32bit Release too, not only the updates media.

And instead of blindly installing everything, you could simply install task-codec-audio and task-codec-video, which are offered via mageiawelcome applet.
Click on applications, and select Audio Multimedia Codecs and Video Multimedia Codecs.

doktor5000 wrote:

totalnoob1 wrote:I went to control center, added as repositories "Tainted updates (distrib 3)" and "Tainted 32bit updates (distrib 6)," and added about as many of the other repositories as the system would allow, searched for the term mp4, and installed every repository program whose name remotely suggested it had anything to do with audio. Then I updated everything.

You will need Tainted Release and Tainted 32bit Release too, not only the updates media.

And instead of blindly installing everything, you could simply install task-codec-audio and task-codec-video, which are offered via mageiawelcome applet.
Click on applications, and select Audio Multimedia Codecs and Video Multimedia Codecs.

good day i try to install the codec packs and get the following. please insert the media named "core release". first the mageia install media is inserted and it's in the usb port i use while installing mageia. second why do i need it inserted to add packages that are being downloaded and installed? any help would be great. thanks

I also stayed without audio after Mageia 5 installation on an HP notebook.
I solved this by accessing a terminal as a user and typed
alsamixer -c 0
Then I could see the volume control on the text-mode and I could see that the audio volume was low. It was a control that was not being shown by Kmix.

lotn2635599 wrote: first the mageia install media is inserted and it's in the usb port i use while installing mageia. second why do i need it inserted to add packages that are being downloaded and installed?

The install media, if of the Classical Install, has a very large selection of packages available.
If you are unable to enable on-line repos/media, the Classical Installer "device" allows extra packages to be installed as and when required.
They will, however, never be updated to the latest versions.

If you are able to enable on-line repos/media, you can disable the requirement for the install media to be connected.
Go to Mageia Control Centre => Software Management =>Configure media sources for install and update=> uncheck cd-rom Core Release and cd-rom Non-free Release, usually the first 2 in the list.

cool i'll give that a try. thanks

you are welcome.

ok doesb't ask for install media now, but still no love with getting aac running

go to Mageia Welcome, and check that audio codecs - on the application tab, is installed.
or
also go to MCC and check that task-codec-audio ....tainted, is installed