amaroK: no Xine engine available & cannot play mp3's

AndyCooll · #1 25th August 2005, 12:18 AM

I came across amaroK (version 1.3) and thought that it would be an excellent multimedia player for the wife. She's from a Windows background and I'm converting her over to Linux. Xine is ok but it's a bit fiddly to navigate through variouus music folders. amaroKs user friendly drag and drop capabilities and playlist features etc are just what she needs! Just one small problem, I cannot get it to play mp3's!!!

I'm running FC4 and first time round simply installed amaroK. Then I find out that it uses other players "engines" and might need these installing first. No problem says I, I've got Xine installed (and that currently happily plays mp3's)... unfortunately however amaroK doesn't see the Xine engine... and though it DOES see gstreamer it says that doesn't support mp3's

.

So I head to the forums. And from various bits of advice I then installed kdemultimedia-extras (since I came across a post that said I might need this). I also installed gstreamer-plugins-mp3. And I made sure the various devel files were installed since these were mentioned in the amaroK FAQ's. Then I uninstalled and re-installed, but still no Xine engine, and still no mp3 capabilities.

Next I try installing all these on another FC4 laptop BEFORE I install amaroK for the first time... but the results are the same. So, finally I try installing it on my Ubuntu Linux pc. And would you belive it... that displays the Xine engine no problem and plays mp3's sweet as a nut!!

So, how can I get amaroK first to see the Xine engine. And secondly, if that ain't possible, at least to play mp3's on FC4?

niko123456 · #2 25th August 2005, 06:18 AM

well to be honest, I dont like gStreamer much and the amaroK devs seem to be favouring this less and less. however, once you've installed all the extra rpm's which enable gstreamer to play mp3's, it should work. follow the multimedia guide on this site.

however, seeing as though xine is a better engine you may aswell install it. head over to the xine website, grab the source for the newest version and install it. follow the instructions as described in either the README or INSTALL files in the tarball. (ps, to untar files you either issue the command with 'tar xzfv xine*', for files ending in .tar.gz, or 'tar xjfv xine' for files ending in .bz2. if you dont feel comfortable compiling from source or it gets too annoying (it is easy really), then download the xine-devel package.

hopefully xine will compile and install okay. you can then go to the amarok.kde.org website and download the source for it. install amarok the same way as per xine. the installer will tell you if anything goes wrong. you'll also need taglib 1.4 - the link for it is included in the installation instructions.

basic instructions for compiling are (in a terminal):
unpack the source tarball
cd into the directory
./configure
make
su -c "make install"

its a fantastic program!

imdeemvp · #3 25th August 2005, 08:02 AM

Did you install it from yum? It should install all needed dependecies.

AndyCooll · #4 26th August 2005, 01:51 AM

Thanks for your reply.

I would prefer to use Xine myself. And I HAVE already installed Xine. Works like a charm, been using it for awhile now, plays mp3's etc etc. However... I thought I'd try amaroK. And though Xine IS installed amaroK still doesn't let me choose the Xine engine for playback.

I've tried imstalling the latst version of Xine and then re-installing amaroK but I'm having a few problems. I'll try again tomorrow

Quote:

Originally Posted by niko123456

well to be honest, I dont like gStreamer much and the amaroK devs seem to be favouring this less and less. however, once you've installed all the extra rpm's which enable gstreamer to play mp3's, it should work. follow the multimedia guide on this site.

however, seeing as though xine is a better engine you may aswell install it. head over to the xine website, grab the source for the newest version and install it. follow the instructions as described in either the README or INSTALL files in the tarball. (ps, to untar files you either issue the command with 'tar xzfv xine*', for files ending in .tar.gz, or 'tar xjfv xine' for files ending in .bz2. if you dont feel comfortable compiling from source or it gets too annoying (it is easy really), then download the xine-devel package.

hopefully xine will compile and install okay. you can then go to the amarok.kde.org website and download the source for it. install amarok the same way as per xine. the installer will tell you if anything goes wrong. you'll also need taglib 1.4 - the link for it is included in the installation instructions.

basic instructions for compiling are (in a terminal):
unpack the source tarball
cd into the directory
./configure
make
su -c "make install"

its a fantastic program!

AndyCooll · #5 26th August 2005, 01:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by imdeemvp

Did you install it from yum? It should install all needed dependecies.

Yes I did (or rather, I used Yum Extender), but it doesn't seem to have installed this dependency. When you install in Ubuntu it specifically mentions the Xine-amaroK plugin, but it never mentioned anything like this in Fedora

imdeemvp · #6 26th August 2005, 02:44 AM

I think you should try to remove it and re-install via yum:

Code:

yum install amarok

and all needed dependencies should install....

AndyCooll · #7 30th August 2005, 07:17 PM

Ok, I'll try that. I'll let you know the results.

Quote:

Originally Posted by imdeemvp

I think you should try to remove it and re-install via yum:

Code:

yum install amarok

and all needed dependencies should install....

dolby · #8 1st September 2005, 11:44 AM

i installed from yum

Code:

 yum install amarok

and doesnt play mp3 atm

dolby · #9 1st September 2005, 11:53 AM

I installed gstreamer-plugins-mp3 and solved the problem

AndyCooll · #10 5th September 2005, 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dolby

I installed gstreamer-plugins-mp3 and solved the problem

Yeah, I promised I'd let you know how I went on and this essentially sums up my feedback.

I still cannot get the Xine engine to work, however I can now play MP3's using the gstreamer engine instead so this will do.

Ended up installing the gstreamer-plugins-mp3, kde-multimedia files and various gtk files (since these seemed to resolve dependency problems). Not sure whether I needed all that lot just for gstreamer to work, since I was really trying to get the Xine engine to work instead but there you go.

niko123456 · #11 5th September 2005, 10:15 AM

did you try compiling xine from source?

AndyCooll · #12 6th September 2005, 12:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by niko123456

did you try compiling xine from source?

Do you mean Xine itself (which is working fine on my pc) or the Xine engine? The latter I didn't. Where can I get the file from?

niko123456 · #13 6th September 2005, 03:14 AM

you havent actually been reading anyones instructions are you? or following the multimedia guide?

xine the movie player and xine the engine are the same thing. they both make the same files. if you compile xine and amarok from source it means you will have all the files and amaroK will know what to do with them. if you install with rpm's, you'll need to get the development files. 'xine-devel'.

AndyCooll · #14 29th September 2005, 12:58 PM

Excuse me, but I HAD been reading everyones instructions AND (to my mind at least) attempting to follow them. I may not have understood them properly however and I apologise for that.

However it was only with your last reply that I understood that the only solution was to begin again and that it would only work properly if I installed from source (thank you for explaining that). For, no I hadn't installed from source, I had installed from rpm.
This I have now done and it works, so thanks everyone for your help.

smfinley · #15 29th September 2005, 06:02 PM

If you wish to use the xine engine with amarok install amorok, xine, and the extra codecs as described here, then do a "wget ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/apt.kde-redhat.org/kde-redhat/fedora/4/i386/RPMS.stable/amarok-xine-1.3.2-0.1.fc4.kde.i386.rpm" and install it with an "rpm -ivh amarok-xine-1.3.2-0.1.fc4.kde.i386.rpm" as root.