I want to play my collection of over 2000 WMA files in Linux, but it seems that there is hardly any support for this. I am using XMMS 1.2.7, but there has to be some libraries for WMA according to article I read on the internet from last month. Here's a portion of the article...

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Playing Windows Media


Unfortunately, the Windows Media Format remains largely unsupported under Linux. A cross-platform version of the Windows Media Player was released in 1998, and despite Microsoft claiming that updates would be released, the development didn't continue.


As the Windows Media Format is a proprietary format that's owned by Microsoft, there is currently only a limited number of libraries available for Linux that are capable of understanding the WMA/WMF format, and they are direct ports from Windows libraries.
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So it seems that there should be some libraries out there somewhere to support WMA. Anyone have any ideas? I don't want to convert my entire CD collection (800 cds, yes I do support the music industry) to MP3!!!

Kris Hermansen

WMA support in Linux seems unlikely. I'm sure the first person that tried to reverse engineer the format would get a nice DMCA (or EU equivalent) fright-o-gram from Microsoft.

You could take a look at the Ogg-Vorbis format as an alternative.

Regards

Try Codeweavers Crossover plugin if you want to listen to wma files. Cleaner way is to conver the wma files to mp3 or ogg.

I dont want to convert almost 2000 files, that takes way too much time. I am downloading the CrossOver demo right now. Will this allow me to play WMA files from within XMMS and other players? I also thought of another solution...

I got WINE (Windows Emulator) up and running and installed Winamp 2.80 (full w/ WMA support) in the fake_windows directory. It works great, but still doesn't play my WMA files! That's weird, cuz I figured that since it is being emulated, WMA support should be emulated within WINE without a hitch cuz it works fine in my Win XP enviornment. Let me know if you guys know why it doesn;t work within WINE...

Kris Hermansen

not in Xmms but using Windows Media Player 6.4.

Crossover is a version of WINE (www.winehq.com) that allows you to run Windows browser plugins. It will also install Windows media player , Apple Quick time 5, etc. BTW the Crossover shows some popup messages for the demo version. That should not matter if you are listening to audio alone.


- Manas

May be a issue with the wma codec, because of which the wma is not being played by Winamp ( over wine).

Hi Kris,
I found something on this on Google. There is a player called Mplayer for linux which is supposed to have added native wma (audio) support for linux on version 0.90pre1 onwards. So no wine business here. Here is the url:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/

If you try this player please let us know how it goes.
Thanks,
Manas

Ok, so after you told me that WMA might be playabe by Mplayer, I went ahead and installed it (maybe incorectly). But, I did play a DVD with it and it seems to work except that the audio was off and I was losing frames. Anyway, I also tried to play a WMA file using Mplayer and it seems to recognize the file as a WMA stream for WMV movies which is what I assume M$ uses for compressed audio in that video file format. Take a look at the errors I received from Mplayer and let me knoe if there might be a way to get it working. BTW: I do have FFMPEG installed (also maybe incorrectly since I am a total n00b).

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netsniper@linux:~> mplayer /home/netsniper/Documents/Nirvana.wma


MPlayer CVS-020612-00:00-2.95.3 (C) 2000-2002 Arpad Gereoffy (see DOCS!)

CPU: Advanced Micro Devices Athlon TB Thunderbird (Family: 6, Stepping: 4)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 3DNow 3DNowEx

Reading /home/netsniper/.mplayer/codecs.conf: can't open '/home/netsniper/.mplay
er/codecs.conf': No such file or directory
Reading /usr/local/share/mplayer/codecs.conf: 36 audio & 97 video codecs
font: can't open file: /home/netsniper/.mplayer/font/font.desc
font: can't open file: /usr/local/share/mplayer/font/font.desc
Linux RTC init error: Permission denied
Using usleep() timing
Can't open input config file /home/netsniper/.mplayer/input.conf : No such file
or directory
Falling back on default (hardcoded) input config
Setting up lirc support...
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: Permission denied
Failed opening lirc support!
You won't be able to use your remote control

Playing /home/netsniper/Documents/Nirvana.wma
Detected ASF file format!
Detected audio codec: [divx] afm:4 (DivX audio (WMA))
Opening audio decoder: [acm] Win32 ACM audio decoder
Loading DLL: 'divxa32.acm'
Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: divxa32.acm, /usr/lib/win32/divxa32.acm, /usr/ local/lib/win32/divxa32.acm
Can't open library divxa32.acm
Loading DLL: 'divxa32.acm'
Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: divxa32.acm, /usr/lib/win32/divxa32.acm, /usr/ local/lib/win32/divxa32.acm
Can't open library divxa32.acm
Loading DLL: 'divxa32.acm'
Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: divxa32.acm, /usr/lib/win32/divxa32.acm, /usr/ local/lib/win32/divxa32.acm
Can't open library divxa32.acm
ACM_Decoder: Unappropriate audio format
Could not load/initialize Win32/ACM AUDIO codec (missing DLL file?)
ADecoder preinit failed
Couldn't initialize audio codec! -> nosound
Audio: no sound!!!
Video: no video!!!


Exiting... (End of file)
netsniper@linux:~>
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So it seems that it can't load the divxa32.acm Win32/ACM audio codec. Is that a reverse engineered codec of M$ divx compression scheme? Shouldn't it have been installed with FFMPEG? Let me know what you think. A solution might be right around the corner...

Kris Hermansen

yes a solution is just around the corner. I just installed the mplayer and listened to a small wma sample on my Suse box.

The errors that you got is becuase the codecs were not present in the /usr/lib/win32 directory. All u have to do is grab this file http://ftp.lug.udel.edu/MPlayer/rele...c-0.60.tar.bz2

Untar it and place it's contents in the /usr/lib/win32 and now you are all ready to go. It is necessary to install the win32 codecs sepreately, this is described in the Readme of mplayer.

However this codec does not support all versions of wma. See the mplayer documentation in the mplayer website. I tested the mplayer with the win32 codecs with the sample wma file from this place http://www.panix.com/web/faq/multimedia/download.html

I hope it helps and you can enjoy ur music collection.

Thanks,
Manas