Mageia forum

I want to cry with frustration at having upgraded from M1 to M2. Everything just worked on M1 and so much is borked on M2. The latest in a long line of struggles is that mp4a files just refuse to play audio, but will play video. All the other suggestions I've seen just don't work .

I have vlc installed from tainted, I have bad gstreamer faad codecs installed AFAIK and it just refuses to play. I found one thread saying he had to reboot and I've tried a million different things and a gazillion reboots and it still refuses to play. So annoyed I upgraded. Would be very grateful for assistance. Thanks.

Code: Select all: rpm -qa | grep tainted | sort cdrdao-1.2.3-6.mga2.tainted faad2-2.7-4.mga2.tainted gstreamer0.10-faad-0.10.23-3.mga2.tainted gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-0.10.23-3.mga2.tainted gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-0.10.19-2.mga2.tainted gstreamer0.10-voip-0.10.23-3.mga2.tainted libdvdcss2-1.2.12-1.mga2.tainted libfaad2-2.7-4.mga2.tainted libfreetype6-2.4.9-1.mga2.tainted libfreetype6-devel-2.4.9-1.mga2.tainted libgstbasevideo0.10_0-0.10.23-3.mga2.tainted libgstphotography0.10_0-0.10.23-3.mga2.tainted liblame0-3.99.5-1.mga2.tainted libpano13-tools-2.9.18-5.mga2.tainted librtmp0-2.4-0.git20111228.1.mga2.tainted libvo-aacenc0-0.1.1-2.mga2.tainted libvo-amrwbenc0-0.1.1-3.mga2.tainted libx264_120-0.120-0.20120306.stable.1.mga2.tainted mencoder-1.0-1.rc4.0.r34578.9.mga2.tainted mplayer-1.0-1.rc4.0.r34578.9.mga2.tainted vlc-2.0.1-1.mga2.tainted

Out of desperation I installed smplayer and it works. Obv.

From what I've read this is likely because to support mp4a vlc needs to be built against an ffmpeg which has been built with faac support. As we can't currently package faac, see long discussions on mageia-dev mailing list (but do package faad), vlc must be missing that support.

I'm not sure what the outcome of the discussions were but IIRC it was mostly positive. You may want to check.
Anything using gstreamer backend should be ok though.

New install on different hardware. AMD Athlon X2 CPU, Creative Labs SB Audigy sound card.

Sound works in all other circumstances. KMPlayer's automated plugin search comes up empty. VLC -- which under other distros (and iirc even previously under mageia!) has had no such problem with these sort of video files -- tries to tell me:

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

I'm pretty damn sure there is a way, and I'm hoping someone will share it with me. Thanx, and Happy New Year!

re "I want to cry with frustration at having upgraded from M1 to M2. Everything just worked on M1 and so much is borked on M2."

I must say my first reaction to M2 was like yours, I held back upgrading until just recently but now that its matured overall i find it OK.

As ive said so many times im getting anoyed saying it , use clonezilla before you start............. you can always go back, and wait...........

But I personaly agree with your sentiments about the standard that MGA1 achieved, and my personal feeling is i would be happy to wait 3 years for MGA3 to be released,

if when it does it meets the same level of perfection and quality of MGA1.

of course we are all to blame when MGA2 has issues, as how on earth can the dev team fix errors they dont know about if we are to idle to

test it for them, and feedback bugs, so spend a little time and effort running up MGA3 and testing it.

regards peter

You need to install the gpac package. It's in the tainted media source. It is "tainted" as there are patents involved with MP4 stuff.

digigold wrote:You need to install the gpac package. It's in the tainted media source. It is "tainted" as there are patents involved with MP4 stuff.

Interestingly enough gpac is not a dependency of SMplayer, So I'm wondering where Mplayer pulls that codec from...

Another user had this issue and said that installing then using SMplayer worked, but if you want to use another player I still think you need gpac.

FWIW, I prefer SMplayer over both VLC and KMplayer..

I've merged the two topics, as they're about the same problem.

OK. I'm not at the affected machine right now, will apply once I am.

BTW, what then is the distinction between "tainted" and "nonfree"?

Xhermin wrote:BTW, what then is the distinction between "tainted" and "nonfree"?

non-free which contains some programs which are not free, or closed source. For example this repository includes nVidia and ATI graphics card proprietary drivers, firmware for various WiFi cards, etc.
tainted includes packages released under a free license. However, they may infringe on patents and copyright laws in some countries, e.g. multimedia codecs needed to play various audio/video files; packages needed to play commercial video DVD, etc.

More interesting reading at:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Software_management

You may want to look at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mirrors_policy#nonfree and the following paragraph

hello guys. i backread the audio section but i cannot find the solution to my problem... i just installed mageia 2, everything seems fine but the audio in playing mp4 video. the audio work in other extention even in youtube. i used the movie player and it says that "MPEG-4 AAC something"please help me. thnks btw the mageia 2 is the best distro i have use. !!.

Merged the above post with the existing thread

hello guys. i backread the audio section but i cannot find the solution to my problem... i just installed mageia 2, everything seems fine but the audio in playing mp4 video. the audio work in other extention even in youtube. i used the movie player and it says that "MPEG-4 AAC something" and H.264 thingy. please help me. thnks btw the mageia 2 is the best distro i have use. !!.

Hello,
Did you enable tainted and nonfree repositories ?
Then try to install codecs like faad2, libdv, libmad, libmpeg2, libxv, x264

Please don't double-post, i've already merged your previous post into this thread.

Lebarhon wrote:Hello,
Did you enable tainted and nonfree repositories ?
Then try to install codecs like faad2, libdv, libmad, libmpeg2, libxv, x264

bro, it worked ! yoho !! you're a life saver ^^ thank you !!!

Mageia forum

How do I play mp4a files with M2?

How do I play mp4a files with M2?

Re: How do I play mp4a files with M2?

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Re: How do I play mp4a files with M2?

missing mp4 aac support?

Re: How do I play mp4a files with M2?

Re: missing mp4 aac support?

Re: How do I play mp4a files with M2?

Re: missing mp4 aac support?

Re: How do I play mp4a files with M2?

Re: How do I play mp4a files with M2?

Re: How do I play mp4a files with M2?

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No sound when playing mp4 video.

Re: How do I play mp4a files with M2?

how to install plugin ...

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Re: How do I play mp4a files with M2?

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