m4a/aac playback

Hi

Apologies if this has been asked multiple times already, but I need an easy to follow solution to be able to play back .m4a files that I have moved from my ipod. I've tried umpteen different music players but with no luck. Any ideas? I'm a complete duffer mind!

Cheers
Cran

 

I believe that amarok is supposed to play those, provided you install some extras. There's some instructions on the forums about installing it, but I can't find the link, so I'll paste some command lines from my notes and hope I recorded all the steps correctly:
sudo yum update fedora-release
sudo rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm
sudo yum install rpmfusion-free-release rpmfusion-nonfree-release
sudo yum install amarok
sudo yum install amarok-extras-nonfree

Hope that helps, Mark

(Edited to add sudo yum update fedora-release)

 

Sorry, didn't work, Amarok says:

There is no available decoder.
file:///home/user/songs/alison springs.m4a

This is nonsense to me!! it won't play saved mp3 files either...

Any further assistance gratefully received.

Cheers
Cran

 

Well, my install of Amarok plays mp3's quite cheerfully, so I can't explain what's going on there. Did you get any errors off the last line (which gets the extra codecs for you)? Have you run sudo yum update fedora-release at any point before now? It fixes some install problems leading from a change in the fedora repository. If you got errors, maybe starting again with that as your first step will do something for you. If not, I'm afraid I'm stumped. According to this post, which I've now found, others have played m4a's fine with Amarok: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6209&p=40897&hilit=m4a#p40897

 

It works! I did the sudo yum update fedora-release first then removed amarok, put it on again and followed your original instructions. Thanks for all your help, nice one!

Cheers
Cran

 

Glad to hear it. Sorry I forgot about the first line - It's a general fix for some problems that I'd done some time ago, and I'd not realised it was necessary for Amarok.

 

Mark I followed these instructions to install Amarok: it came out successfully. However, when I ran Amorok from the desktop menu multimedia I got an Error Amarok: "Xine was unable to initialize any audio drivers"
????
Advice would be most welcome

 

Sorry to hear that, but I can't explain it. It all works fine for me (obviously) and I don't think I've installed anything else that would make a difference. Do you get the same effect if you launch from terminal? (just type amarok)

My only thought is that it could be a conflict with some other application that uses the sound card. It could be worth restarting, and then making amarok the first thing you do.

If that doesn't work, then I'd advise posting the full output of what the terminal says, and hopefully someone will be able to advise you.