Add support for the OPUS audio format

[Sturm Flut]

Currently playback of OPUS audio files does not seem to be supported.

[Victor Thompson (vthompson)]

Hi Simon! Thanks for taking the time to file this issue! Could you attach your /home/phablet/.cache/upstart/mediascanner-2.0.log file? When I save one of examples on this webpage [1] to the device it does show up in the app under Unknown Album/Unknown artist.

New file was created: /home/phablet/Music/music_128kbps.wav.^M
Extracting metadata from /home/phablet/Music/music_128kbps.wav.^M
Added song to backing store: /home/phablet/Music/music_128kbps.wav^M
 author : ^M
 title : music 128kbps^M
 album : ^M
 duration : 90^M

The added title is playable in the app, so the OPUS codec is supported. I imagine that an Ogg encapsulated OPUS file will have valid metadata to display/categorize.

1 - http://www.opus-codec.org/examples/

[Sturm Flut (sturmflut)]

Hey Victor,

thanks for the quick answer!

Looks like you fell into the same trap as me in the beginning: all the links at the top of the OPUS examples website point to WAV files, OPUS files end in ".opus". An actual OPUS file would e.g. be [1]. Copying this file to my phone gives me the following mediascanner-2.0 logfile entries:

New file was created: /home/phablet/Music/ehren-paper_lights-96.opus.
Extracting metadata from /home/phablet/Music/ehren-paper_lights-96.opus.
Error when adding new file: Unable to discover file /home/phablet/Music/ehren-paper_lights-96.opus

I think gstreamer is missing the "opus" plugin.

[1] http://people.xiph.org/~giles/2012/opus/ehren-paper_lights-96.opus

[Jim Hodapp (jhodapp)]

Indeed, the issue is by default, gstreamer1.0-libav is not installed because of licensing issues. If you make your image writable and then install this package, you should have no issues playing OPUS files anymore.

[Sturm Flut (sturmflut)]

Thanks for the solution, Jim. Another great thing destroyed by licensing issues.

[Michał Karnicki (karni)]

Jim, is this because of BSD license?
https://www.opus-codec.org/license/

[Jim Hodapp (jhodapp)]

No it'd be more because of the licensing of the codec intellectual property than anything. We need to be able to figure out if we need to license this codec IP and what that might cost (if anything).

[Jan Claeys (janc)]

The package gstreamer1.0-libav is not needed for Opus support; the Opus codec is part of gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad (which is in universe currently)

And the codec is considered to be safe by major players like Mozilla, Google, Cisco & Microsoft (all relevant patents come with a royalty free license for Opus), so I'm not sure what is holding up Opus support? (Even Canonical seem to consider it safe, as it's in universe and not multiverse…)

[David Gámiz Jiménez (david-gamiz)]

Hi devs,

Thank for that incredible app to ubuntu phone! :D

Is very neccesary feature to add audio clips.

Cheers,
David Gámiz Jiménez

[Michael Zanetti (mzanetti)]

I tried to take a stab on adding support for voice messages to Telegram. But I got blocked by this one.

Please consider adding support for this codec to enable voice messages in chats.

[madbiologist (me-again)]

Good news. Opus support has been moved from gst-plugins-bad1.0 to gst-plugins-base1.0 in gstreamer 1.8. This change is also in the 2nd pre-release, gstreamer 1.7.91 which is available in the currently under development Ubuntu 16.04 "Xenial Xerus". Ubuntu 16.04 is scheduled for release on 21st April 2016.

[madbiologist (me-again)]

gst-plugins-base1.0 version 1.8.0-1ubuntu1 is available in Ubuntu 16.04 "Xenial Xerus".

[Yuan-Chen Cheng (ycheng-twn)]

this bug is for phone and tablet. it's release after we have phone/table run in Xenial.

[Andrea Bernabei (faenil)]

can have the needed gstream package version added to the Overlay PPA so that currently released phones and tablets can get it?

[Jim Hodapp (jhodapp)]

It's something that will be coming soon as it's definitely on the team's backlog.

[Andrea Bernabei (faenil)]

great news, thanks Jim! The fact that you marked it as "wishlist" had me worried for a second :)

[Jim Hodapp (jhodapp)]

No worries. Wishlist doesn't mean that it's a low priority necessarily. It can mean that it's just a new feature to add which is true in this case.

[Yuan-Chen Cheng (ycheng-twn)]

it's said opus codec will be release in gstreamer in ota13. It seems we can continue working on app part.

[Jim Hodapp (jhodapp)]

You can track this landing currently in silo 58. It's presently under QA.

[Jin (jindallo)]

The patch we provided is landed and verified with rc-proposed.

Paste the device info here:
    current build number: 573
    device name: mako
    channel: ubuntu-touch/rc-proposed/ubuntu
    last update: 2016-11-18 15:11:10
    version version: 573
    version ubuntu: 20161118
    version device: 20160401.1
    version custom: 20161118