ALAC Playback

[stevebow]

Most of my music collection is in ALAC (.m4a container) format, managed by iTunes. Has anyone had any joy in playing ALAC files with the media player?

I assume the gstreamer framework as installed by default is missing a plugin for ALAC playback after the following noted in serial o/p:

Code: Select all

{531}<    90.313> [eServiceMP3] construct!
{531}<    90.314> [eServiceMP3] playbin uri=file:///media/autofs/TS509_Public509/Media/iTunes%20Media/Music/Brian%20Eno/Apollo_%20Atmospheres%20&%20Soundtracks/05%20An%20Ending%20(Ascent).m4a
{531}<    90.520> [eServiceMP3] starting pipeline
{531}<    90.707> [eServiceMP3] state transition NULL -> READY
{531}<    91.127> [eServiceMP3] m_errorInfo.missing_codec = audio/x-alac, samplesize=(int)16
{531}<    91.138> [eServiceMP3] Gstreamer error: Your GStreamer installation is missing a plug-in. (12) from uridecodebin0
{531}<    91.146> [eServiceMP3] Gstreamer error: Internal data stream error. (1) from qtdemux0
{531}<   104.139> [eServiceMP3] stop /media/autofs/TS509_Public509/Media/iTunes Media/Music/Brian Eno/Apollo_ Atmospheres & Soundtracks/05 An Ending (Ascent).m4a
{531}<   104.139> [eServiceMP3] stop state:READY pending:PLAYING ret:FAILURE
{531}<   104.166> [eServiceMP3] destruct!

A little searching has revealed that for a few people that installing the "bad" gstreamer plugins has worked for them (gstreamer has 3 "classes" of plugins - good, bad and ugly), so I installed the complete "bad" plugin set with opkg install gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad
Unfortunately, no playback with the same error. I flew in the face of danger and installed all the good and ugly plugin sets. No difference. I then installed the complete base plugin set, still no difference.

The serial log mentions "Internal data stream error. (1) from qtdemux0" - notes for this component are here:

https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/ ... demux.html

It is a part of the isomp4 "good" plugin, and there's mention of audio/x-m4a, so I guess the direction is right.

I'm kind of at a loss what to try next. Further searching has revealed success for some when gstreamer1.0-libav is installed, and looking in /usr/lib/gstreamer-1.0 I don't seem to see a libgstlibav.so (I assume the name would be), but an opkg list gstreamer1.0*libav* does not return an available package. I guess we don't have a mips version available - in that case, would it be possible to make this lib available to try please?

A search in this forum found a list of plugins peteru posted 4 years ago:

https://www.beyonwiz.com.au/forum/viewt ... ac#p115359

i.e. Package: enigma2-plugin-codec-audio-apple-lossless-alac

but I cannot seem to find this with opkg either.

Any ideas??

[stevebow]

Any takers?