2009-10-11

MP3 support on Moblin (part 1)

The easiest way to add support for MP3 is by installing a pre-build RPM package. Fluendo has one available for free. The reason Moblin isn't distributing a decoder is of legal issues, however one might get them by "legal" ways where that term will vary amongst different juridictions. It clearly is an annoying topic to raise up! If you buy a laptop you can expect to have MP3 support since the sellers have ways to collect royalties. At least that's what I learned from the Moblin mailing-list.

Installing an RPM is done by running the simple command "rpm -i [package]" with the super user.

4 comments:

  1. yah this works but some of my application keep crashing after i installed that rpm. or maybe its random.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I downloaded and installed 'fluendo-codecs-mp3-10-2.i386.rpm'. However, when trying to play an mp3 sample Moblin gives an error, stating that the media cannot be played and that I might search for some gstreamer codecs. What's going wrong??

    ReplyDelete
  3. To make sure GStreamer is able to play MP3 files after installing a plugin it is possible to run a test with gst-launch.

    gst-launch playbin uri=file://"<FULLPATH_TO_MP3>"

    gst-launch is normally a symlink to gst-launch-0.10.

    If it doesn't play the MP3 file that something is wrong. And there is no much help I could provide.

    On the other side it may just be that you need to properly restart the music application. In the case of Hornsey (the Moblin media player) it also runs in background as a daemon, hence closing the window won't help. Just restart your device and you should be done.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Strange, works now although I'm sure I did restart.
    Streaming an mp3 radio station does not work but I guess that is a different problem?

    Anyway, thanks for the help, wonderful to have mp3 working!

    ReplyDelete