Need Good Audio Player
 

I'm new when it comes to what software is available for Linux so can someone help me pick a good all purpose music player? Or maybe help me make one the default? I have SuSe 10.0 installed and I can't seem to listen to any streaming audio... I can't listen to aac streams... I can open .pls stuff which then links me to a stream but I get nothing from the default Kaffeine player... Maybe it's configured wrong? Any help would be appreciated.

P.S. I love SuSe... it's the first distro to recognize all my hardware :)

EDIT:
I tried amaroK but I don't hear any sound from that... Maybe I need codecs? Where would I doenload some in an rpm fashion so I can easily install them and not have too many configs to change so I don't mess more stuff up.

XMMS

Is there an rpm of it somewhere? If so can you help me with a link please? Thanks

I have no experience with SuSE

use yast or
rpm.pbone.net
rpmfind.net (or something)
xmms.org

other users had installed xmms using yast as far as I know from the threads that are similar to yours.

I installed it from yast and even installed the graphical part. Problem is... I get the same thing I get with amaroK... Nothing. I even added the codecs to the list of XMMS install. See, I hear sounds in SuSe like error messages or tone from the SIP phone and even music on hold on the SIP phone, but I can't play an mp3 or a streaming mp3... What could be wrong?

Also, thank you very much for the quick answers.


EDIT:

I tried DIVX movies also from a DVD and the default player, Kaffeine, goes through like 3 minutes in one second and doesn't show a picture or make a sound. I just see the time bar increase like crazy.

SECOND EDIT:
I have been reading through the posts and aparently SuSe's YAST stuff, like xmms, kaffeine, and dvd players come "stripped" of mp3 and dvd funcionality. I've read that packman is better than yast in this aspect and that I should remove yast stuff that deals with dvd and mp3 and all dependent libraries, then install packman stuff. Here's my problem... How do I find everything that is mp3 dependent and installed by YAST? Then, how do I uninstall it? I am guessing packman has prepacked rpm's with menu items for the programs? Can anyone point me to a howto? I just installed SuSe today and everything is working great but the multimedia side of it (no mp3 music or streams, no divx movies, no other streams, no aac, etc...). So I basically have an office computer and I can't trick the boss cause I really can't play any multimedia files. Problem is... I wanna use the computer as a home computer. Are there any how-to's out there?

Have you run a search here? If you did you would find at least 3 website links to help with no mp3, dvd, wmv files etc. It is because free SuSE doesn't come with any of that, you ahve to download it seperately.
You need to be more specific about problems up front, because amarok is a great media player, I love it. But you do indeed need codecs. Try using the forum search for "install mp3 SuSE" or other phrases, you will find a few hundred about how to do it, mostly with the same few sites listed as fixes.

Oh.... sorry I'll do a search then. I didn't see your message. I was typing my second edit while you typed this response :)

As for specific how tos, packman is a repository, guru is a repository. What you really want is an article called Hacking OpenSuSE, it is a Jem Report, and gives a very detailed walkthrough of how to install mp3 support, divx, wmv, quicktime, flash player, Sun's Java, Adobe PDF reader...

It is the one I recommend heavily.

http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/178/42/

I'm going to try all of the report out tomorrow cause pizza is here for tonight and I'm dead tired. By the way, I love this forum. Everyone's really helpful :) Thanks a lot to all.

Those instructions worked like a charm. Only had one issue: SuSe didn't install with gcc so I had to install it from YaST so I could get DVD playback rpm installed. Other than that it was straight forward. Thanks all :D

I think I dealt with two or three issues of SuSE sound in the last two days... is it a trend or something?

I think it's just that SuSe is so cool with this new release that lots of people want to use it and they see that after they install it they have sound but no mp3 or dvd functionality. The link above is good though. I loved it.

It sounds very buggi-ish...

OK so I have DVD, and I have streaming audio although not in windows media format and I have mp3 playback. Now, is there any way to get movies.yahoo.com to play the trailers? I have kaffeine, xmms, mplayer, real player 10... None of them will play the stream in firefox or in konqueror. Is it easy to fix this? Is there any way to play streaming video in firefox? How about streaming windows media format audio like radio stations? Thanks a lot.

I didn't get my computer to stream streaming video clips on yahoo yet :(

Well it's OK. Maybe we'll both find an answer in this case from someone who has :) I usually go to movietickets.com to watch streams because I can see times when they are playing too. The real player stream almost came up but it said cannot support asp... That's I guess because the link to the movie was .asp and then some other stuff...

amarok

http://amarok.kde.org/

It doesn't seem to directly integrate into firefox? My amaroK also locks up when putting 3 things in the playlist. And I love the player. The interface is awesome. It's easy to use... So sad that it freezes on me :(

Does it still freeze if you switch away from the "arts" engine to the "helix" or "gstreamer" audio engines?

Anywho, more to the point about videos, you can set up mime types in FireFox and so long you have the extensions/plugins listed from the Jem Report, you should be able to stream video using embedded kaffiene. Did you install that plugin?

I installed everything on the Jem Report. How do I set up mime types in firefox? Do you know of a HOW-TO page or can you give me a few detailed instructions? That would really help me out.

As for amaroK... It only freezes aparently when I drag and drop the items in the playlist. If I just add from inside the playlist via the add media button then I can add as many as I want... When you say arts, helix, and gstreamer it's like a foreign language to me. You have to tell me what command to type in to find out what i'm doing. I am running amaroK as it came out of the SuSe installation. And when it comes to media players for Linux I know very little. I know however it's using the xine engine... Maybe there is an update? I did YaST updates but it didn't show up.

Amarok's configuration page(right click in the player, not the playlist and not on the title bar) has options for which audio engine you want to use. Arts is common and I have seen many threads on these forums mentioning little glitches like that with it. Xine and Gstreamer are both better choices. Helix is the real player engine, so if you installed that, you have it too, it is just another option, I prefer not to use it, but that is for personal reasons as I have a great distaste for Real. Try swapping to another engine and seeing if the problem goes away.

Back to the issue, before we really get into mime types...
http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/faqs/firefox-linux.html Here is a good start on plugins, including how tos and details on how they work and what they do and where to get them. mplayer and xine(gzine) and helix can all be added via plugin to give you streaming video in FireFox.
It also has links to FAQs about plugins and the like for FireFox, Mozilla is VERY good at documentation, it is one of the many resons I heavily support their products.

The only engine I see in the amaroK settings window for the engine is Xine... If I click down on the list that's the only one that shows up... I didn't install Helix because I didn't know about it. I also didn't install the other two you mentioned for that same reason. I'm going to try to install helix via installer bin tonight. Or should I get the rpm?

I took a look at that page for plugins. I am going to try and download mplayerplug-in and follow the four instuctions:

Hopefully that will set everything right. Either way, I will let everyone know how it goes tonight when I will have some time.

My XMMS crashed every once in a while if I drag and drop a few files onto it while it's playing...

I fixed it by killing it, sending -9 to remaining processes of xmms, it gave me, cannot open /dev/dsp, and then I just put back the arts pluggin as my output pluggin... and it did it.

I cannot get the plugins to work correctly... They just don't want to show up. In the following folders I have:

/opt/MozillaFirefox/lib/plugins/
mplayerplug-in.so
mplayerplug-in.xpt

/usr/lib64/browser-plugins/
mplayerplug-in.so
mplayerplug-in.xpt

How can I make it so I see streaming video on the web? I downloaded the mplayerplug-in package from one of the sites given on Jem Report to get those files in those folders but I still can't see streaming videos. I even installed the helix back end for amaroK...

I even tried to plugins package from the mozilla link and still i cannot see streaming video.

In a new browser window type in "about:config" and hit enter. It should pull up a long list of settings and file information. It say anything about video, mplyaer, plugins or mime? If you are unsure exactly what to look for, maybe you want to post all of it so we can take a look?

How can I copy that whole config page and post it here?

for mime all i see is:
helpers.global_mime_types_file default string /etc/mime.types
helpers.private_mime_types_file default string ~/.mime.types

for plugin:
applicaiton.use_ns_plugin_finder default boolean false
java.java_plugin_library_name default string javaplugin_oji
plugin.default_plugin_disabled default boolean true
plugin.expose_full_path default boolean false
plugin.override_internal_types default boolean false
plugin.soname.list user set string /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6:/usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6
security.xpconnect.plugin.unrestricted default boolean true

for video or mplayer there is nothing.

Okay... does anything show up in the settings either? Specifically in the Options > Downloads, hit the "Plug-Ins" button. You should see various media types. Hopefully there will be checkmarks in the enabled tab for all of them.

Otherwise, if youa ren't seeing anything in the about:config or in the plugins section of the options... it isn't installing at all.

RE: videos not working in web pages:
use packman to install mplayer.
(http://packman.iu-bremen.de folder is suse/10.0)
search for "mplay" and that will bring up like 3 things, get all 3. at least the one for mozilla if you've got the others, that's the one you want. plays things just fine for me in webpages.

let me know.

BTW: my xmms and amarok and xine are broken too, and I have xmms-wma installed. won't even play those anymore and it used to.
maybe the uninstall and reinstall from packman is a good idea?

konqueror:
nspluginscan

What will that do and where do i type that? In the address bar?

In the settings of konqueror, you can set the path of the plugins, then you can click, "scan for plugins".

You can then restart konqueror and have your plugins working.

Yeah but i'm trying to get firefox to have all the plugins. I don't use konqueror all that often. I am a firefox fan for life :)

Also, konqueror doesn't show any plugins at all when i go there and push scan for plugins. I have a lot of folders with plugins in them listed but when it scans it doesn't find any...

Maybe
pdf and swf are the only plugins there and they are both enabled. Where is the suse 10 folder for firefox?

./mozilla I think. It is probably best to run a search for it. I had some issues finding the Thunderbird and ./Mozilla-Thunderbird I think was the proper location. There is another one somewhere that modifying did nothing at all to.

I found both thunderbird and firefox in:

/opt/Mozilla-Firefox
/opt/Mozilla-Thunderbird

I checked the
/opt/Mozilla-Firefox/lib/plugins folder and sure enough there's a lot of plugins in there, including mplayer... still, there are no plugins registering with firefox

Instead of /opt/Mozilla-Thunderbird try ./Mozilla-Thunderbird I think the opt one is incorrect. Don't ask me what it is, I have one too.

I tried /home/user/.mozilla/plugins also. I added all the plugins to that folder and they don't show up inside the program. It's as if firefox doesn't scan for the plugins...

I even tried removing firefox completely then putting it back... nothing.
My files for the firefox are located in /opt/MozillaFirefox.
I have plugins put in there and I have mplayer and mplayerplug-ins also installed... I installed them with YAST and still nothing. I copied the mplayerplug-in.so and .xpt files in the plugins folders... nothing....

Well, then I have to say, let's start seeing if it is a wider issue...

Can you install themes and extensions?

I can install themes and extensions no problem. It's just that the plugins aren't installed through firefox but outside of it so maybe they go to a different directory?

Maybe I should just do a clean reformat and install? Sure I'd have to wait a while for all the updates then go through the jem report again... but hey... it might be a solution? Or will I be at the same place I am at now?

I really don't know. It could help, it might not.

You could try a dozen things, but not knowing what the problem actually is... I don't know if anything will help.

Your best bet, instead of full reformat, is wipe firefox out, and then strat fresh there with 1.0.7 from an rpm.

It may be a permissions issue where the plugins aren't writing, which you could know for sure by loggin in as root and trying to install them. But using YAST, you need SU anyway, so that shouldn't be the case.

You could try a bunch of other things, but it is haphazard guessing as what the fix would be without knowing a cause... I will look around when I have some time, in the mean time, good luck.

Well thanks anyway :) I think I'll go ahead and do a reformat because my openoffice takes like 2-3 minutes to load and that's annoying when I'm trying to type up something real quick and need a spell checker. Thanks though :)

Reinstallation did not work. I also noticed that once I follow the jem report instructions for making suse 10 a desktop pc, the openoffice 2 loads really slow....

Should I just install the eval version of SuSe10.0? I heard that it doesn't expire.

I found how to make it work. I went back and installed the i586 versons of every plugin, including java and mplayerplug-in. Then I restarted firefox and blam. All the plugins are there. Woohoo! Now I just need to figure out how to make the video show up. I get the status of the mplayer such as buffering, connecting, playing mms:/// blah blah but no video. Still, one step further.

i did what the jemreport said... still didnt get mp3 support, java dependencies still fail, and video didnt show up

so i searched mpeg and clicked everything... ive got the hard drive space

mpeg videos work... mp3s work in noatun... not xmms...i dunno why...

java still wont work, havent tested flash or acrobat reader...

usualy when i try a new os i keep installing stuff till i know what i need... then format and follow my list to the T... i know enough about linux to install stuff and fix some mistakes.... but i make more then i can fix most of the time :(

Installed SuSe 10.0 Eval version for 64 bit from DVD... same issues. I can't get them to work. I will be doing a 32bit install tomorrow.

Can you post a link to one/any of these videos you are trying to get to stream? Let's see if it is surely on your end. I have seen some streaming, I wonder how many, as I rarely ever look.

go to movies.yahoo.com/trailers and pick any movie and try to watch its trailer. Or, go to movietickets.com and again try to see any previews. Dunno why...

They are both mms:// streams. Maybe that's the problem? All I know is it's not working right. I thought maybe the dvd eval version came with video stream support but i guess not.

Is there any way maybe you can post a step by step for me to follow? I'll just reinstall 64bit and start from scratch. I'll install just the versions you say of everything you say. Like i586 instead of x86_64... I just want it to work if that's possible. In the meantime I made my amaroK not open at all up... I think I did that installing xmms... I suck at this. Thanks

Okay, here is me watching the Legend of Zorro Trailer, looks like a good one btw, I can't wait. Screenshot It does look rather black, instead of what I hoped for, but it does play video.
I also listen to Alice 105.9's Live Feed, which is mms.

So go figure... Perhaps the best thing to do, is remove all media players and libraries, and replace them all from packman, just in case SuSE's are causing the whole issue.