banshee and m4a files [MIME problem - SOLVED]

Message

thrope · Post by **thrope** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 2:35 pm

Hi,

One of my few remaining frustrations with Linux is the lack of an itunes replacement for management of a large collection (largely AAC .m4a files) with ipod integration... At the moment I run itunes on windows 2000 in VMware since I haven't found anything in Linux that is suitable...

Anyway I was hoping Banshee, which looks great, would be the answer, but again there is a problem...

It doesn't import m4a files... It will play them if I open the file as a location (although it crashes when I try and move about within the track) but it won't import them...

Cannot Import: <file> (Entagged.Audioformats.Exceptions.UnsupportedFormatException)

I am running banshee-0.10.10-r4 which the changelog reports has a fix for m4a importing...

Has anyone else got this working, or any other alternatives (other than rhythmbox).

thanks,

thrope · Post by **thrope** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 6:27 pm

arrgghh.... the height of frustration...

after checking this topic:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-45 ... nsbad.html

and installing gst-plugins-bad, banshee can now play m4a files fine if I open location, but it still won't import them
(Entagged.Audioformats.Exceptions.UnsupportedFormatException)

I'm actually amazed this is still such a difficult issue...

thrope · Post by **thrope** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 7:09 pm

I'm sure there must be something to do with the MIME database as to why it's picking up an unsupported filetype...

In gnome/nautlis properties the files show as
application/x-extension-m4a

(I would expect audio/x-m4a or audio/mp4)

Does anyone know how the mime database should be configured? This system is a couple of years old, although updated, but I'm wondering if somehow I could clean out the mime database and get a fresh one that might work... Don't know much about how the MIME system in Gnome works, so any help greatfully received...

thrope · Post by **thrope** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 9:39 pm

After reviewing this topic:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-16 ... x+m4a.html

I found that there is a problem with the freedesktop.org.xml file in shared-mime-info-0.17-r2

In the mp4 section, the OFFSET attribute should be changed from 0 to 4, to read as below:

Code: Select all

 <mime-type type="audio/mp4">
    <comment>MPEG-4 audio</comment>
    <comment xml:lang="bg">~P~Cдио ~Dайл, ~Dо~@ма~B MPEG-4</comment>
    <comment xml:lang="de">MPEG-4-Audio</comment>
    <comment xml:lang="nb">MPEG-4-lyd</comment>
    <comment xml:lang="no">MPEG-4-lyd</comment>
    <alias type="audio/x-m4a"/>
    <magic priority="50">
      <match value="ftypM4A" type="string" offset="4"/>
    </magic>
    <glob pattern="*.m4a"/>
  </mime-type>

Then the type is reported correctly as MPEG-4 audio in Nautilus (and the files now work in rhythmbox)

Unfortunately Banshee still refuses to import them.

thrope · Post by **thrope** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 9:51 pm

Result!

I found it was working under a different user (of course didn't think to try that earlier), so I did a find ./ | grep mime under my home dir... after deleting ~/.local/share/mime it worked! I guess that is some kind of local cache that was interfering with the system wide settings.

Anyway working now - importing was pretty quick, although tracks with special characters failed with a message like

Code: Select all

** Message: Bad encoding for '/win/mp3/NewMP3/Compilations/Rephlexions!/18 B\xe9d\xe9.m4a'
Consider using MONO_EXTERNAL_ENCODINGS

so if anyone knows how to sort that out I'd be glad to hear, otherwise

[good natured sarcasm] thanks for all the help! [/sarcasm]