Feb

29

Recently I transfered some of the iTunes .m4a music files to my Linux Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy , the pre-installed music player Rythmbox can’t recongnize music files in .m4a format. So in order to play .m4a file, we must choose an alternative music player. I have done intensive research and come to the conclusion that the best music player to use would be Amarok. If your Linux OS is like a vergin touched by the first time (in layman’s word, you are a newbie using Linux system, read this article to make sure you can install.

To Install Amarok Open Terminal . Main Menu -> Accessories -> Terminal .Now type this in Terminal:
sudo apt-get install amarok

The player only solved part of the problem, Now since you have installed the Audio Player Amarok, now we should head forward and install codecs so that these players work without any problem. The one we are going to install is called Gstreamer.

Please note there are many tutorials teaches you the wrong or outdated way to install Gstramer. To avoid confusion and trouble expalining, I will just show you the easiest quick and dirty way to get the codecs installed:
sudo apt-get install gstreamer*


The above command tells the computer to install every plugin of Gstreamer, the good, the bad and the ugly.

After you have installed Gstreamer, our Amarok Player will work like charm while playing Media files..



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10 Comments so far

  1. adhunic on February 29, 2008 11:08 pm

    Thanks for the tip! I have been looking for an answer like this for a while, nice article!

  2. admin on March 4, 2008 11:19 am

    np. I am glad to hear you like it!

  3. EG on March 11, 2008 11:38 am

    Will this also work with a program like Songbird?

  4. admin on March 11, 2008 9:52 pm

    I think because of certain patent issues (with Apple’s iTunes .m4a format), Songbird can not play .m4a files by default. But it seems that there is some work around, you can check out the following thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=483403

  5. btf on April 27, 2008 7:19 pm

    I just used the console command ’sudo apt-get install gstreamer*’ and I could play m4a’s with banshee and really anything else. Running Ubuntu 7 (Gutsy Gibbon)

  6. Ian on April 29, 2008 4:03 pm

    Worked perfectly! Thank you!

  7. admin on May 5, 2008 10:27 am

    You are welcome, Ian!

  8. Silviu on June 28, 2008 11:17 am

    I don’t recommend installing gstreamer that way, I tried it and playing music got messy (bad sound).

    You can try this for m4a:

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats#head-b2ef05b7fc6ca533d0412652487931518c723924

  9. Jason on July 25, 2008 5:28 pm

    If you’d like to expand upon your itunes library a bit Broken Fractal Ventures has released their free version of the iTunes DRM compatible Gstreamer plug-in which can be used with any media player that uses the Gstreamer frame work.

  10. Kent on August 30, 2008 9:52 pm

    Thanks ALOT I’ve been trying to get my iPod to work in Linux all day! :)

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