Cannot play .m4a when building amberol from source

Applications
1

Hi,
I am currently trying out the Amberol application and tried building it myself using GNOME Builder.
Interestingly, I can play .m4a files when running the application installed via flatpak.
However, when I build the app myself I get the following error:
GStreamer error: Error from element /GstPlayBin3:playbin3/GstURIDecodeBin3:uridecodebin3/GstDecodebin3:decodebin3-0: Your GStreamer installation is missing a plug-in.

I am wondering why meson finds all the required gstreamer plugins and still I cannot play the .m4a files when building the application myself.
Can someone help me out here?

PS: I am building the app against the GNOME Runtime.

2

Hi,

Weird…
The main difference is the runtime version:

Can you try setting the runtime to “48” locally and rebuild, to see if something improves?

1 Like
3

Hi @gwillems,

thanks for the hint! I can play the .m4a files after changing the runtime to gnome-48.

So it looks like there are some breaking changes in the gstreamer versions included in the gnome-master runtime?

1 Like
4

There may be something broken on gnome-master side, yes.

Looking at the logs, there was a recent update of gstreamer to version 0.24, and the openh264 addon was removed because of unfixed vulnerabilities. Could be related to the m4a support.

I suggest to wait a bit until it gets fixed. Also, don’t forget to run flatpak update on your side to fetch the latest master changes.

2 Likes
5

I have the same problem with Showtime - with the master updated now some videos don’t have sound, others cannot be played or don’t have hardware acceleration.

6

I recommend opening an issue against gnome-build-meta for bugs in the GNOME run time.

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Adding the extension “org.freedesktop.Platform.codecs-extra” as mentioned in Issues playing some video and audio files (#1104) · Issues · GNOME / gnome-build-meta · GitLab does not resolve the issue for me

9

Does it work when you install the built app as flatpak and run it as ordinary app instead of through Builder?

10

So I learned how to build the app via Builder against the Gnome runtime and how to build it via Builder on my host system.
Unfortunately I dont’t know yet how to install the app as flatpak.
Can you tell me the commands how to do so from the project root directory?

11

There’s supposed to be Export Bundle button somewhere and after clicking it should create .flatpak file that you may open in gnome software tool or any other software store app and install it from there.

https://builder.readthedocs.io/projects/sharing.html

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12

builder-export
builder-export884Ă—682 70.6 KB

1 Like
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Ok here are the steps I performed:

  1. Export amberol as flatpak bundle
  2. Try to install flatpak bundle via GNOME store → have to install org.gnome.Platform/x86_64/master from gnome-nightly channel
  3. Install flatpak bundle and open folder with .m4a files

Result: The files are playing but I get a crash report from Ubuntu 24.04 with the title: “gst-plugin-scanner crashed with SIGABRT in __assert_fail_base()” from package libgstreamer1.0-0 1.24-2-ubuntu0.1

Edit: When I start the flatpak app a second time, I can play the .m4a files and do not see a crash report again

14

flatpak apps don’t use host gstreamer libraries so the crash shouldn’t be related to the app.

Anyway this was reported to Builder app but I don’t know if it’s fixable from there.

Without a fix you need to either test videos with no patented codecs or test it outside Builder environment like above.

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