I know my sound works, or at least I know it does with gaim, but I can't get any mp3s (or .wma) files to play with xine.

I did some searching and found that xine doesn't nativly come with software that allows it to play mp3s. However I can't find a download for slack.

Could someone help me find what I need to install to get mp3s to work or give me another media player to try?

Thanks.

You can get the mplayer codecs package from linuxpackages.net which will give you the necessary codecs for windows/realplayer etc formats. You may also need to configure xmms to tell it where things are.

You should be able to find a codec for it or a link for one, on the xine site. mplayer seems to have the widest selection of codecs and codec links of all the players that run in X (not including anything that requires KDE/GNOME I don't know anything about those). If you want to use it you should build mplayer from source for best results. XMMS is a good player also and comes on the Slack 10.2 distro.

I misread it. xmms is another media player. Xine should work fine.

ok I just installed xmms, and its doing the same thing that xine did.

When I open an mp3 it gives all the information, but it never plays. Its like you pressed the stop button. The player never actually plays the song.

If it gives you all the info I'm pretty sure the codec for mp3 is working. If you check alsamixer and max out all the channels, pull up the options or prefs menu in XMMS and make sure you're taking the default devices.

Its confusing me why the file wont even start. The timer just stays at 00:00.

Usually that means the output device doesn't exist. Did you check prefs?

I have been playing around with the preferences and I still can't get it to start the file.

Have you got the codecs installed?

Do you have mpeg layer 1/2/3 (libmpg123.so) in your list of input plugins?
What output plugin are you using?
What audio device?
What mixer device?

Did you run alsamixer?
Are master and PCM maxxed both ON and maxxed-out?
Is your alsa script in rc.d executable?
Is the volume control up on XMMS?

Ok I have been busy and havn't gotten a chance to play with it some more but I am trying to get it working again.

In xmms, I do have the mpeg layer 123 plugin enabled. The output plugin I am using is alsa 1.2.10. The audio device is ESS Audio Drive ES1869 hw 0,0. The mixer device just says pc speaker.

I ran alsamixer and everything is turned up, including master and PCM. I don't know what you mean by "Is your alsa script in rc.d executable. And yes the volume is up on xmms.

Like I said, the strange thing is the file doesn't even start. It says at 00:00 even when I try and start it from the middle of the file, it goes back to 00:00. What could be preventing the file from even starting?

Thanks for your reply.

One reason a file doesn't start is that it can't find the output device.

I don't know what ESS Audio is, is that an external soundcard? You should run alsaconf and let it use your onboard soundcard. After you get that working, if you have an external one we can work on that next. After alsaconf, go back to xmms prefs, click on "configure" on the alsa output plugin and choose "driver defaults" for everything. Close xmms.

Go to a root terminal and do ls on /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa*
It should be executable and show something like this:
Note the rc.alsa is a symlink to either rc.alsa.oss or rc.alsa.no.oss. It will always look lrwxrwxrwx. What we care about is what whatever it points to is set as. In this case we are looking at rc.alsa.no.oss.
If you don't see x in there but only r or rw then do chmod 751 rc.alsa.no.oss to make it executable during startup.

Then do /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa to start it yourself (next time you boot it will run automatically)

Then back out of root to user terminal and do alsamixer.
You should see a bunch of channels like main line aux PCM etc. Turn them all on (key m) and use up arrow to pump...up the volume. Escape to save settings.

Now try xmms again.

Thanks for the quick reply and your patience. I am trying to get this working on my old laptop. So old in fact that it has an ISA sound card. Before I think it detected the wrong sound card. Now when I turn up the volume on XMMS all the way I can hear feedback from the speakers.

However, it still does the same thing. The music file stays at 00:00 when I try to play it, so it still doesn't even seem like the music file is starting.

I'm no expert on this (obviously as we didn't fix it by now ) but I think maybe on an older PC you will need to use OSS which is a compatibility layer for alsa for older hardware (Old Sound System).

You can change the symlink later but for now try to execute alsa.no.oss instead and change your output plugin in xmms to oss and select default drivers/default mixer device and see if this works better.