Amarok unable to play WMA-streams

[Sokraates]

I installed the win32odecs and the path to Win32 codecs in ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/xine-config is correct. Still Amarok won't play any WMA-streams. The error message is (translated from german) "Error loading media. There is no audio channel."

[Albin Tonnerre (lutin)]

Are you sure you aren't trying to play protected WMAs ?

[Sokraates (sokraates)]

I checked the files again and I can't rule out, that they are protected. I tried another one, that deffinitely is not protected and it played okay.

On the other hand all the files play fine in KMplayer.

[Sokraates (sokraates)]

I checked again with a protected file and this time none of the media players could handle it. Kaffeine even was so nice to report, that the file is protected.

Anyway, if anyone would like to try themselves, the file I'm having trouble with can be downloaded from http://www.roadrunnerrecords.de/artists/Slipknot/music.asp It's the first song, "Don't Get Close".

[Jonathan Marsaud (zic)]

Same on my PC, Confirmed.

[Jonathan Marsaud (zic)]

Confirmed => Unconfirmed.

I try to play this .wma with Mplayer => Same bug ...

[Sokraates (sokraates)]

I tested it again and mplayer won't play either (though for me, it simply hangs). This is the output:

Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: avisynth.dll, /usr/lib/win32/avisynth.dll, /usr/local/lib/win32/avisynth.dll

One the other hand Kaffeine and Kmplayer play the file. They take some time to buffer (and they show, that they are buffering), but then everything works.

[Angel Veglektsis (angelix)]

The problem is not that Amarok can't play WMA files. Amarok CAN play this files. Your problem is that Amarok can't play streaming WMA(asf) files.

The file that i downloaded is an ASCII file with a wma extension. This kind of file has just a reference to where the audio player have to go to play the audio file(buffer some secs and play).

[Sokraates (sokraates)]

Okay, so it's not a problem with Medibuntu but Amarok. I never used Amarok to play WMA-streams before, but as far as I can tell from other posts on the net, it worked with Amarok in Edgy.

[Andres Mujica (andres.mujica)]

Hi. as is explained at the comment

https://bugs.launchpad.net/amarok/+bug/104949/comments/7

the problem is that the file is an ascii file with an url inside to the actual stream.

The workaround is to replace the http:// part of the url when is added to amarok with

mmsh://

This way amarok can handle the stream in the right way.

I've just tested with your link and it worked.

[Andres Mujica (andres.mujica)]

It seems to be an amarok or xinelib parser issue. at the kde bug is the workaround already posted here (mmsh)

[Alan Gibson (alan-gibson)]

I was able to fix all my problems playing real media streams by installing libxine1-plugins

[radar.dude (atco)]

O.K. this is for all those ubuntu newbies (like me) who rack their brains (and nerves) poring over their search machines desperately looking for a way to make Amarok (great application but what a nerve trial..) play some decent streams from the web. Look no further.
Just open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install libxine1-plugins

(thanx Alan Gibson)