GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 459933
use qtmux (Ipod won't play rhythmbox' m4a)
Last modified: 2021-06-11 15:31:39 UTC
Please describe the problem: When I use rhythmbox to transfer music to my 2nd generation ipod nano, almost everything works fine. However, when I try to transfer songs in a format the ipod doesn't support (like ogg vorbis), rhythmbox automatically converts the song to the mpeg4 format (m4a, aka aac). When I try to play the song on the ipod, it refuses: It just skips to the next song after half a second. This happens event though the ipod is supposed to play aac. Steps to reproduce: 1. Start Rhythmbox 2. Connect a 2nd generation ipod nano to the computer 3. Drag a song encoded in the ogg vorbis format onto the ipod icon that shows up 4. Unmount the ipod 5. Try to play the song on the ipod Actual results: The ipod skips to the next song after half a second. Expected results: The ipod should play the music. Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information: I'm running Ubuntu Feisty Fawn.
This probably means that you don't have the right audio encoding profile to generate aac files that an ipod can play. In the rhythmbox preferences, under 'music', there's an 'edit' button that you can use to set up encoding profiles. There's probably an AAC profile in there; what does the 'GStreamer pipeline' text box for this pipeline say?
It's hard to give you the entire line, since rhythmbox freezes everytime I open the window. Here's the beginning of the line though: audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! faac ! And the text continues out of the textbox.
Take a look at bug #406719 -- Banshee users have been here before. Aaron Bockover closed this saying the problem is with a broken aac gstreamer plugin, not Banshee, so I assume the same problem might apply here with Rhythmbox. My FLAC and OGG files get transcoded as mp3 rather than aac but I don't know offhand how Rhythmbox determines which profile gets used for this purpose.
Could anyone tell me how to make rhythmbox transcode to mp3 rather than m4a? I want a working alternative.
(In reply to comment #4) > Could anyone tell me how to make rhythmbox transcode to mp3 rather than m4a? I > want a working alternative. > You can disable the aac codec. In rhythmbox go to Edit->Preferences->Music. Use the edit button on this site. Select the AAC profile. Edit it and deactivate it. Then i transcode to MP3 again.
Shouldn't this be fixed soon? I mean, it is over a year since it was reported, and as several threads (for instance on ubuntuforums.org), it still is happening, for some reason. Yes, you can of course switch to mp3, but that isn't really fixing the problem ... To reiterate the problem: The (transcoded) song gets added to the iPod and ipod database, but when trying to play it on a (first generation nano) it refuses to do so. If you open the file in a file explorer using either Windows or Linux, the AAC (.m4a) file will play perfectly.
One comment already mentioned http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=406719#c1 , ie there is not much rhythmbox can do about that as long as gstreamer can't encode "ipod-compliant" m4as.
The problem is likely that iPod/iTunes does not support the AAC Main profile. It seems to only support the Low Complexity (LC) profile. The default profile for the faac encoder is Main. It is possible to change the profile with the "profile" property. profile=2 is LC. faac profile=2 ! ffmux_mp4 The gnome-media AAC profile probably should be changed since most people want iPod compatibility with AAC. My impression is that AAC LC is much more widely support than Main.
Should this be reassigned to gnome-media then?
Can anyone confirm that a file encoded with faac profile=2 is playable by an ipod ?
The default profile should be using ffmux_mp4, or better, the new qtmux when it's done.
For info, qtmux is in gst-plugins-bad since about 3 weeks. It should then be part of 0.10.10
I updated the profile to use LC in bug 498617. Changing the summary to use qtmux, when released.
qtmux should already be out, what's the status of this?
(In reply to comment #14) > qtmux should already be out, what's the status of this? I guess we just need someone with an ipod to make a patch.
Mass move to new component.
libgnome-media-profiles is not under active development anymore. Its codebase has been archived. Closing all its open tickets as part of housekeeping. See also https://gitlab.gnome.org/Infrastructure/Infrastructure/-/issues/595