Cannot listen to any radio stations - WMA convert error

[ferdies]

Hi, I have successfully installed Squeezecenter into my CentOS. However. I cannot listen to any radio station. Everytime I select a radio station, my Softsqueeze will give an error message:

WMA convert error

This is happening for all the radio station. Any help will be appreciated. I am new to this setup.

Thanks.

[bpa]

Softsqueeze cannot play WMA streams natively. On Centos you will need to install mplayer or ffmpeg which will be used to transcode wma into Flac. You will also need to add in the relevant custom conf files to tell SC to use mplayer/ffmpeg.

[ferdies]

You will also need to add in the relevant custom conf files to tell SC to use mplayer/ffmpeg.

Thanks for the reply. I have installed mplayer

MPlayer 1.0rc1-3.4.6 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team

I have tried connecting to BBC test live feed and mplayer seemed to have connected successfully, as per below:

---
[root@asterisk1 squeezecenter]# mplayer rtsp://rmlive.bbc.co.uk:554/bbc-rbs/rmlive/ev7/live24/radio4/live/r4_dsat_g2.ra
MPlayer 1.0rc1-3.4.6 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.40GHz (Family: 15, Model: 4, Stepping: 1)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Can't open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
Can't init input joystick
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing rtsp://rmlive.bbc.co.uk:554/bbc-rbs/rmlive/ev7/live24/radio4/live/r4_dsat_g2.ra.
Resolving rmlive.bbc.co.uk for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: rmlive.bbc.co.uk
Resolving rmlive.bbc.co.uk for AF_INET...
Connecting to server rmlive.bbc.co.uk[212.58.227.87]: 554...
Cache size set to 640 KBytes
Cache fill: 18.75% (122880 bytes)
REAL file format detected.
Stream description: Audio Stream
Stream mimetype: audio/x-pn-multirate-realaudio-live
demux_real: invalid chunksize! (0)
Clip info:
name: Radio 4
author: BBC
copyright: (C) British Broadcasting Corporation 2007
================================================== ========================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 64.1 kbit/4.54% (ratio: 8010->176400)
Selected audio codec: [ffcook] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg COOK audio decoder)
================================================== ========================
AO: [oss] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback...
A:2422738.2 (672:58:58.2) of 0.0 (unknown) 1.0% 22%
------------------------------------------------

Being a noob in SC, would you be able to help on how I can configure SC to use mplayer? Will really appreciate it.

Regards.

[bpa]

If you have (or are planning to) install AlienBBC - it already has the necessary entries for WMA as well as RealAudio.

Otherwise - create a file called custom-convert.conf and save in the same directory as SC's convert.conf & types.conf files. This configuration assumes that Centos can support fd devices beyond 3 - some distro do not support the /dev/fd device (and this is not a floppy disk device).

After creating file and making sure permissions and ownership is the same as the convert.conf file. Restart SC. Check the Settings/Advanced/Filetypes to see if the Windows media types are enabled and refer to mplayer.

The custom-convert.conf file should have the following lines:

wma wav * *
	[mplayer] -really-quiet -vc null -vo null -cache 64 -af volume=0,resample=44100:0:1,channels=2 -ao pcm:nowaveheader:file=/dev/fd/4 $FILE$ 4>&1 1>/dev/null

wma mp3 * *
	[mplayer] -really-quiet -vc null -vo null -cache 64 -af volume=0,resample=44100:0:1,channels=2 -ao pcm:nowaveheader:file=/dev/fd/4 $FILE$ 4>&1 1>/dev/null
 | [lame] --silent -r -x -q $QUALITY$ -b $BITRATE$ - -

wma flc * *
	[mplayer] -really-quiet -vc null -vo null -cache 64 -af volume=0,resample=44100:0:1,channels=2 -ao pcm:nowaveheader:file=/dev/fd/4 $FILE$ 4>&1 1>/dev/null
 | [flac] -cs --totally-silent --endian=little --channels=2 --sign=signed --bps=16 --sample-rate=44100 --compression-level-0 -

[ferdies]

If you have (or are planning to) install AlienBBC - it already has the necessary entries for WMA as well as RealAudio.
[/code]

Thanks. I already did installed AlienBBC - but I have this error, in the Plugins Tab (under setting)
--------------------------
Plugins

SqueezeCenter includes some plugins that you can use with your remote or in the web interface. You can choose to enable or disable individual plugins below.

Note: You will need to restart the application to see the effect of these changes.

Alien BBC Plugin is incompatible with this version of SqueezeCenter. Please update.
---------------------------
Looks like AlienBBC v2.0 is not compatible with the SC I have currently installed in my system.

My system configuration:
SqueezeCenter Version: 7.1 - 19545 @ Thu May 8 00:40:08 PDT 2008 - Red Hat - EN - utf8
Server IP address: xxx.xx.x.xxx
Perl Version: 5.8.5 i386-linux-thread-multi
MySQL Version: 4.1.20
Platform Architecture: i686-linux
Hostname: asterisk1.local
Server Port Number: 9000

I tried installing AlienBBC since it would have been the simplest way to configure SC to use mplayer - based on some info I found on the web. But got into an update issue of AlienBBC 2.0 and SC 7.1

Will try to follow your suggestions to manually configure mplayer. Will update soon.

Thanks.

[bpa]

SC 7.1 is code still in development and parts of it can break overnight - it is intended for user who don't mind delving into the code.

7.0.1 is beta but very stable and mainly has bug fixes to 7.0

AlienBBC is setup for SC 7.0.x. If you want to use it on 7.1 you need to change the MaxVersion entry in install.xml from 7.0+ to *. It will work but you'll get a few warning as some of the Plugin settings API has changed.

[ferdies]

I have tried creating custom-convert.conf and I still have the problem.

I did install 7.1 because of the issues I have encountered, as stated in this thread:

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47334

So do you suggest that I remove my current SC and just reinstall SC 7.0? Will I not encounter the earlier problem I had in the other forum?

THanks.

[bpa]

If 7.1 works for you - stick with it. Just don't be surprised if some standard bits aren't working - log it as a bug and they will get fixed.

Simplest solution is to edit AlienBBC's install.xml and change the MaxVersion to "*". Then delete from Cache directory "plugin-data.yaml" file (it is a cache of install.xml for all plugins). Then restart SC. If AlienBBC works and plays BBC streams then then WMA stream will also work.

[ferdies]

Thanks a lot. AlienBBC and WMA streams are now perfectly working!

Have done similar resolution to other plugins which gave "required update" messages like WeatherTime and Custom-Browse. Just changed the maxversion to *, as suggested above.

Again, thanks.