How to playback an iPhone recording in Fedora 17

JohnE1 · 10-08-2012, 12:10 PM

Our drummer recorded our band with his iPhone.

He emailed me the recording as an .m4a file, which plays just fine on my gf's Windows machine, but I cannot get it to play with any of the players I have installed on Fedora 17 (Rhythmbox, VLC, mplayer, etc.). I have tried installing ffmpeg streamer, etc., to no avail. What am I missing?

When I search for a solution, they all reference iTune rips and DRM, but this is an ORIGINAL recording, NOT anything commercial.

I appreciate any help. Thanks!

frankbell · 10-08-2012, 08:06 PM

Google tells me that they might play in Amarok.

http://www.blog.highub.com/linux/pla...-linux-ubuntu/

But the most popular solution seems to be to convert them to *.mp3.

http://www.benninger.ca/?p=87

ArfaSmif · 10-09-2012, 02:38 AM

First off are you sure the file is actually in m4a codec (aac)?. If so you can install "gstreamer-plugins-bad-nonfree" this will provide libgstfaac.so which can decode aac formats (m4a).

I use "audacious" to play aac files without trouble. You need to install "audacious-plugins-freeworld-aac" from rpmfusion.org for this to work.

Ginola · 10-10-2012, 08:35 AM

vlc works a treat for me.

unSpawn · 10-10-2012, 09:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnE1

I cannot get it to play with (..) (Rhythmbox, VLC, mplayer, etc.). (..) What am I missing?

Not many people seem to see the value of proper diagnostics but VLC (CTRL+j), Mplayer (CTRL+m), ffmpeg (stderr), mediainfo all produce output which should show you what a media container holds. That way you can check, like ArfaSmif said, if the file actually uses AAC and if there's any other quirks.

JohnE1 · 10-11-2012, 05:54 AM

Thanks for all your replies! Good to see that .m4a files can be played in so many players.

It started working for me after a recent update that included bug fixes for FFMPEG.
I have successfully played the .m4a files using GNOME MPlayer.

So, I guess I had it configured correctly all along, just bitten by some FFMPEG bug.

Thanks again for all your suggestions!

John