Talk:Fluendo mp3 decoder

Installation experiences / tips

I could not get this installation to work in Sugar, on build 623, on a B4 OLPC. However, it worked from the command line using

gst-launch-0.10 playbin uri=file:///path/to/file.mp3

It works well in Build 650, and mp3 files can be played from the Journal, using the Watch & Listen Activity. --Tomhannen 11:16, 10 December 2007 (EST)

Simpler installation procuedure?

I emailed Fluendo asking if the install process could be simplified for OLPC systems, as going through an online shop is quite laborious for a free (as in $0) codec. Here is the reply I received:

We have a license agreement allowing projects like OLPC to distribute the mp3 codec themselves for
free as a distribution channel for our technology.

Our Codec manager (included in Fedora 8) allows automatic installation
of MP3 as well. For the others we prefer if they pass by our webshop.
This way they have an account and see our other product which is a good
marketing point for us.

Best regards,

Does this mean that the installation process could be improved? --Tomhannen 11:16, 10 December 2007 (EST)

I think that Mp3 support isn't really wanted as a goal of the project. We might be able to add the codec for free, but mp3 as a format is not Free/Libri. Ogg is preferable and superior. As an education machine for children there are several reasons *not* to include the ability. And for G1G1 users, not having the codec will encourage them to support Free formats, and perhaps lead them to Free and Open (CC) music. This stance is about social change, much the same as Ubuntu's on the same subject. is for Insects 12:58, 10 December 2007 (EST)

I completely agree with the goal of free & open source software, but I also would like as many people as possible to be able to access a wide variety of news sources.. Why is it easier to read a PDF file than an mp3 or Realplayer stream? Surely these are equally as proprietary? I'd love to persuade major broadcasting organisations to release their content as ogg files (maybe one day I might..), but until they do, I'd feel like OLPC was missing out somehow, and would be criticised for restricting its decoding abilities, compared to other FOSS projects, such as firefox... --Tomhannen 18:17, 11 December 2007 (EST)

Downloading file from internet

I've downloaded the MP3 codec from Fluendo as I found in one of your wiki entries but I can't figure out where it put it to unzip it and copy it to the directory I want

Dcutter1 10:51, 23 December 2007 (EST)

Here's some notes on how I finally got the MP3 codec moved. Not sure if this was the correct way to do it but hey I'm not a 8 year old working on this machine :-)

Location of these instructions: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Fluendo_mp3_decoder (modified with actual commands I used to get file unpacked and moved)

In order to download the codec you have to "buy" the Fluendo mp3 decoder from their store for $0.00 from https://shop.fluendo.com/.

You are then allowed to download the file fluendo-mp3-2.i386.tar.bz2

At this point I'm not sure where it downloaded the file but I went to the journal and clicked on the clipboard icon. I then went into terminal mode did a cd / to get to root and found the file in the tmp directory. The file name is in the awful long string of numbers and letters that this system uses to keep track of file names.

Unzip it - tar -xvfj fluendo-mp3-2.i386.tar.bz2 (the filename actually looked like this 1256ab-345-15b-123f45RMm.tbz2,

The unpacked worked and it created a new directory in the tmp directory (note: if the file name has a "(" in it tar can not unpack it as it thinks this is an invalid name, I ran into this the first time I tried this).

I changed to SU so I could copy to user/lib and then I did the copy cp tmp/fluendo-mp3-2.i386/libgstflump3dec.so /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10

You can also copy into $HOME/.gstreamer-0.10/plugins on your local system.

If you copy to /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10 then the plugin will be available to any user logging into this machine.

Once it is copied over, verify that gstreamer recognises the plugin by doing a 'gst-inspect-0.10 flump3dec' from the root directory.

Unless this command reports back 'No such element or plugin 'flump3dec' the plugin should be sucessfully installed and you should have access to playing back MP3 files using GStreamer applications. You should see a couple pages of information about the plugin.

Hope this helps and for you people that know this system please update with any easier way to do this.

Dcutter1 08:24, 24 December 2007 (EST)

Other plug-ins

Has anyone tried Fluendo's other gstreamer plug-ins, specifically the one for MPEG-4? Does it work, and how is playback performance? Bouncey 12:59, 5 January 2008 (EST)