I'm trying to get xmms on my Debian system to play .m4a files that some of my Mac-using friends have encoded for me. Toward that end, I've been looking for an easy way to install a Debian xmms plugin that will play aac files on my machine.

I've followed the instructions for editing my sources.list and preferences files so that I can apt-get the rareware packages, and I've installed xmms-aacplugin on my machine. However, it simply won't play any of the .m4a files my friend has sent me. (However, it would play an .aac file I encoded myself.)

Subsequently, I tried the version of faad I pulled down from the site, to see if I could at least decode the m4a files into .wav files. It gave me an error about "Gain control not yet implemented" and claimed to have been compiled in February...which is odd, given that a message I found on this very board said I needed a more recent version due to file header changes directed me to go to rareware if I wanted said version. Further comparing, I noticed that, though the rareware list said 1.18 was downloadable from rareware, what I had gotten was 1.1.

Subsequently, I commented marillat out of my sources.list and tried again. This time I got "faad: relocation error: faad: undefined symbol: faacDecGetCapabilities".

Thinking maybe that if I could get the most recent versions of the faad libraries, I could recompile the AAC plugin and it would work, I tried to install faad2, libfaad2-0, and libfaad2-dev. Oddly enough, I couldn't get libfaad2-dev no matter how hard I tried, as it claimed a dependency on a lifaad2-0 (sic) and simply wouldn't download.

Anyway, by this point I'm very frustrated with the whole thing, and wish someone could wave a magic wand and make my xmms play those .m4as. Short of that, could someone please advise me how I can make this thing work?

Thanks.

Someone just suggested to me "rename the files to .mp4". And I tried it. And it worked.

Which kind of begs the questions:

1) why isn't xmms smart enough to realize that .m4a = .mp4?
2) is there some simple way I can make xmms see .m4a files as .mp4, just so I don't have to go through a flurry of renaming every time I download?

Thanks for all your help.

my build was compiled YESTERDAY, marillat's build was probably compiled in february. you need to install MY packages, not marillat's packages. i gave instructions on how to do that on the rarewares site.

also, 1.18 is for faac, not faad2. faad2 is 1.99.cvs, note the difference marillat calls faad2 "faad" and i call faad2 "faad2", so install faad2 if you want my packages.


marillat doesn't even offer faac, so you are further confusing faac and faad(2)



rebuilt and no more problems. i'm also working on building the current cvs snapshot... it'll take some time.



yes. m4a is apple's twisted idea of fun for renaming an mp4 file.
evidently the plugins (which are quite in development) don't recognize m4a yet.
i'll look into it.


later

the plugin just test the extension to play file. if you need to play mp4a audio files i'll upgrate the source code to do this.. just send a mail to me or come on the irc hydrogene audio (my nick is ciberfred on it) and just tell me i could send you the update more rapidly. Also i'm online only on night (between 21h - 24h paris time)