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Playing .AVI and .FLV files

Added by Pascual Lucero almost 12 years ago

Hello,

I would like to know if there is a way to play .AVI and .FLV files in Audacious. So far I can't do it and when I add a folder to a playlist, none of these filetypes are recognized. In case of an affirmative answer, I would like to know which libraries I need to install, in order to see them appear in the plugins list. Thanks


Replies (11)

RE: Playing .AVI and .FLV files - Added by Michael Schwendt almost 12 years ago

Very likely you will need ffmpeg to build the "ffaudio" input plugin. I can play a few .flv files downloaded with youtube-dl in Audacious.

Publishing the output of "audacious -V somefile.flv" may be interesting.

RE: Playing .AVI and .FLV files - Added by Pascual Lucero almost 12 years ago

I have ffmpeg and consequently, I have the ffaudio input plugin. In the past, I have used this plugin to play some wav files and well, currently I have in my playlist ape, wav, mp4, mp3, wma, cue, pls, mp3, and all of them are recognized once I add the folder containing them to my playlist (I don't have .ogg files to try). The only exception of files not added are those .flv and .avi files.

1) I tried to play a .FLV file using Audacious. I wrote the command you write from the command line and there was no output in the terminal, it simply started to play the file. However, when I tried to add the contents of a folder containing this flv file to my playlist, all files in the folder are added to the playlist with the sole exception of the flv file. The only way I could see the file added to the playlist was to add it individually.

2) When I tried the same thing with some .AVI file (23M its size, not too big), things went worse: It started playing the file 14 seconds later, the program almost froze. And certainly the same procedure of adding the folder to my playlist had the same result of not adding this .avi file. I tried to add the file individually to my playlist (instead of writing the command) and the program crashed. It appeared:

[frame.c:591] error: That mode cannot be!
Segmentation fault

This problem happened with small files, low-res files, big files, etc. As an additional comment, as irrelevant it might be, I converted some of those files (using ffmpeg) to .mp4 files and they were recognized by Audacious and played instantly; I did the experiment with a huge file (1G) and it worked too. But I guess the solution I am looking for is not to convert all my .flv and .avi files to mp4 in order to play them using audacious.

Thanks for your attention!

RE: Playing .AVI and .FLV files - Added by Michael Schwendt almost 12 years ago

no output in the terminal

Uh? Which version of Audacious do you refer to then? Option -V for Audacious 3.2.x enables debug information which literally floods the terminal with messages not limited to details about probing the files to be played:

$ audacious --help|grep V
  -V, --verbose                   Print debugging messages

And the following:

[frame.c:591] error: That mode cannot be!
Segmentation fault

That would not something suitable for the forum, but instead try to get find a test-case, get a backtrace in gdb, figure out whether it's Audacious Plugin's fault or a problem in ffmpeg, then submit a bug report.

RE: Playing .AVI and .FLV files - Added by Pascual Lucero almost 12 years ago

[_Uh? Which version of Audacious do you refer to then? Option -V for Audacious 3.2.x enables debug information which literally floods the terminal with messages not limited to details about probing the files to be played:]

I don't know if it has something to do with the fact that I use the package as it was built in the webupd8 PPA for audacious. I don't know if compiling from source could make a difference with respect to the debug information.

On the other hand, the fact that flv files are played quickly and without problems, BUT they are not being added to a playlist when I choose the option to add a folder IS a problem with Audacious, so I guess it could be taken into account.

On the .AVI files, I have checked the list of plugins and this is what happens: When the ffaudio.so plugin is allowed (FFmpeg Support in the list of plugins), it happens that .AVI files are not added to a playlist when I add the folder, and if I play an AVI file in audacious, it takes a lot of time, almost in danger to crash the program (or it definitely crashes). When the plugin is not allowed, none of .flv files an .avi files can be reproduced. HOWEVER, if I add individually one of them to a playlist (of course, they won't be played), and I double click to play it, the program hangs and freezes. I guess that shouldn't be the expected behavior just because the file cannot be played.

So, in synthesis:

- .flv files are reproduced correctly and quickly with the ffaudio.so plugin, but they are not added to a playlist when I add respective folder; probably the routine in audacious to add folders to a playlist is missing recognition of flv files.

- .avi files are reproduced only until you wait a very long time; in some files, the program crashes. Related to ffaudio.so plugin.

- When ffaudio.so plugin is not enabled, if you add unsupported file like .flv or .avi to a playlist and try to reproduce it, the program freezes, which is not fine: if the file cannot be reproduced for lack of plugins, or just because it is not an audio file, the program should close inmediately or do nothing. But freezing is not correct.

Thanks for your attention and possible causes and solutions to these problems.

RE: Playing .AVI and .FLV files - Added by Michael Schwendt almost 12 years ago

It may be an idea to contact the packager at Web Upd8 and find out what has happened to options -V and --verbose.

I cannot reproduce those issues. Perhaps it's specific to the flv files you use? Here they are added to the playlist just fine. How about publishing such a problematic file somewhere?

When the plugin is not allowed, none of .flv files an .avi files can be reproduced.

Same here. An example file, verbose output from Audacious, and a backtrace might make a difference. Disabling an input plugin can result in a different plugin trying to handle the file. Either accidentally or because it detects data it thinks it can handle. This would need to be examined.

in some files, the program crashes. Related to ffaudio.so plugin.

As suggested before, especially since it's just "some files" and not all files: Find a test-case, get a backtrace in gdb, figure out whether it's Audacious Plugin's fault or a problem in ffmpeg, then submit a bug report. Making available the problematic file may be very important.

RE: Playing .AVI and .FLV files - Added by Pascual Lucero almost 12 years ago

Hello,

Thanks for the comments, but actually none of my questions have been answered. Perhaps there are some problems with the ffaudio plugin, but still the following issue has no been answered:

.flv files are reproduced correctly and quickly with the ffaudio.so plugin, but they are not added to a playlist when I add respective folder; probably the routine in audacious to add folders to a playlist is missing recognition of flv files.

Is there an answer for this? Thanks

RE: Playing .AVI and .FLV files - Added by Michael Schwendt almost 12 years ago

Show the full terminal output of "audacious -V" when trying to add the folder.

RE: Playing .AVI and .FLV files - Added by John Lindgren almost 12 years ago

.flv files are not added when scanning a folder because they are generally videos, not music.

RE: Playing .AVI and .FLV files - Added by Pascual Lucero almost 12 years ago

".flv files are not added when scanning a folder because they are generally videos, not music."

But mp4 files are also video files and they are added, so it is the same situation here. These are video formats, but th e audio is something you might like to hear regardless the fact you can't see the video. On .AVI files, the behavior is the same, but I guess the reason is different because it takes a while for recognition of the file (and sometimes, with the ffaudio.so plugin, it crashes). But on .FLV files, these can be recognized, knowing that they wil be added instantly.

Thanks for your attention

RE: Playing .AVI and .FLV files - Added by John Lindgren almost 12 years ago

.mp4 seems to be a common extension for audio files as well (AAC in an MPEG-4 container); take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding.

RE: Playing .AVI and .FLV files - Added by Michael Schwendt almost 12 years ago

I've got a test folder with a mixture of .mp4, .m4a, .ac3 files. Plain audio in MPEG4 container. But the .mp4 extension alone is not enough to draw conclusions about the file content, as there are multiple MIME types for it, too. Both in audio/ and video/, and registered at IANA even. For .mp4 files that means it isn't too bad to assume that these are audio/mp4 if the user wants to load them into an audio-only player. The player could still reject them later when analyzing the file content and detect them as video/mp4.

.flv files

These are video formats,

Strictly speaking, it's a container format, too. For video and audio and several different codecs even, not limited to MP3 audio.

These are video formats, but the audio is something you might like to hear regardless the fact you can't see the video.

Questionable. Based on the .flv extension alone you cannot assume that it makes sense to "hide" the fact that it is a video and not just an audio file. For example, it would not be good either to claim that Audacious supported MIME types video/flv and video/x-flv if it only plays back the audio track of such files without warning about the missing video content.

On the contrary, Audacious can claim that it supports audio/mp4 actually - but if the user loads .mp4 files which are video/mp4 it's the same as with FLV. ;)

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