Subsonic Forum

volcs0 · Joined: 12 Nov 2008 Posts: 19

The regular way to transcode m4a does not work (faad --> lame). To transcode apple lossless, you need something else, like xld or mplayer or ffmpeg (or something else?).

xld will transcode to wav, but I cannot get that program to pipe to stdout.

Any other ideas?

Thanks.

Ikyo · Joined: 30 Nov 2005 Posts: 58

What kind of machine are you using this on?

volcs0 · Joined: 12 Nov 2008 Posts: 19

Ikyo · Joined: 30 Nov 2005 Posts: 58

Try using this in the transcode:

m4a2mp3 %s %b

Create a shell script called m4a2mp3 with:

volcs0 · Joined: 12 Nov 2008 Posts: 19

Worked great. Thanks.

One thing that tripped me up - I didn't realize that all the commands had to actually be in the transcode folder (I know it says this, but I missed this in the upgrade). So even though they are in my path, Subsonic was not finding them. I tried creating a symbolic link, but that didn't work either. So I ended up just writing the script to the transcode folder. I'll have to remember to save that folder when I upgrade again.

Thanks for the help.

Ikyo · Joined: 30 Nov 2005 Posts: 58

No problem at all...I use that to play pretty much everything from wma to m4a.

mancubus220 · Joined: 06 Mar 2009 Posts: 7

I'm trying to transcode flac and wma files to mp3. I have flac codec installed and linked to, but its not working with the default subsonic transcode command, which is why I'm trying the ffmpeg method. I have ffmpeg installed and I've run your script from the command line (not the smartest idea but wanted to verify it ran without errors). This script isnt working in subsonic though and I can't figure out why. The script I created in /var/subsonic/transcode is executable by all users. There are no errors in the subsonic log. The Tomcat log has unrelated errors about not being able to create thumbnails but nothing about transcoding. I'm running gentoo linux (I've enabled most of the relevant ffmpeg compile flags I'm pretty sure). I've looked just about everywhere I can think of for why it's not working. I'm inclined to think its a problem with subsonic and not ffmpeg, but how would I confirm this? I'm running this on a headless machine without speakers.

mancubus220 · Joined: 06 Mar 2009 Posts: 7

Doh, I figured it out within a few minutes of that last post...and it was a pretty simple thing...I had restarted tomcat several times and cleared the playlist thinking that would cause my new transcoding settings to take effect, but I didn't realize you had to activate them for each player (I'm using the web player). After I did that, everything works swell. I might suggest a more intuitive interface for future revisions! Smile

Ikyo · Joined: 30 Nov 2005 Posts: 58

When I was testing some things, I did it too. You should see the first script that I was using to work on this.

mancubus220 · Joined: 06 Mar 2009 Posts: 7

I imagine using ffmpeg (one command) is a lot faster than decoding with one codec and then encoding with another (like lame). Internally, ffmpeg probably does it too but I bet they have optimizations to make it run faster. This is good because flac playback used to be really slow for me with the old method.

dobson · Joined: 14 Apr 2009 Posts: 36

I'm sorry to ask basic questions. I've tried for quite a while now and I'm still unable to get this to work for me. using LAME 3.98.2, FFmpeg v0.5.

when I follow "m4a2mp3" shell tip, here is the error I get from the log:
java.io.IOException: /var/subsonic/transcode/m4a2mp3: not found
at java.lang.UNIXProcess.forkAndExec(Native Method)
at java.lang.UNIXProcess.<init>(UNIXProcess.java:52).....
{the list goes on for a while}

however, I have the "m4a2mp3.sh" script in the transcode directory, and here are the permissions for all the files in that directory.

lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 13 Apr 14 16:42 faac -> /usr/bin/faac
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 13 Apr 14 15:56 faad -> /usr/bin/faad
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 15 Apr 14 16:41 ffmpeg -> /usr/bin/ffmpeg
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 18 Apr 14 16:42 ffmserver -> /usr/bin/ffmserver
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 13 Apr 14 15:56 lame -> /usr/bin/lame
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 110 Apr 13 23:34 m4a2mp3.sh

any ideas?
thanks so much for all the help. subsonic is really wonderful.

dobson · Joined: 14 Apr 2009 Posts: 36

forgot to mention, I'm using OS X 10.5.6 for what it's worth.

and the transcode setting I have for m4a > mp3 is
Step 1: m4a2mp3 %s %b
Step 2: blank

enable, and active in the player.

sindre_mehus · Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 1446 Location: Oslo, Norway

Probably you need to specify m4a2mp3.sh in step 1. (Including the .sh extension)

dobson · Joined: 14 Apr 2009 Posts: 36

thank you Sindre!
i tried that before (when I had other issues with ffmpeg) and it didn't work, so i forgot to try it again after figuring out those issues. now it's playing my lossless files great.

it's *mostly* working now except for this:
when a lossless m4a (but not a lossy m4a) song is loaded into the flash player, I get a problem with the flash player time very similar to the one described here:
Transcoding breaks Flash player's progress bar?

has anyone else experienced that when transcoding m4a lossless?

(using subsonic v3.6-build 806)

sindre_mehus · Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 1446 Location: Oslo, Norway

If the problem is what I think it is, it's been fixed in 3.7.