Playing mpc files on Raspbian (SqueezePlug)

[rickwookie]

Hi, I posted this at the RPi forums, but haven't had any luck there, so I thought I'd see if anyone here could help.

I've been running LMS (since Slimserver!) on my Ubuntu server, but thought it'd get another Pi to use instead to save some power.

Using Squeezeplug had made this a breeze, and though it's not as snappy as the Ubuntu server, particularly using the web interface, it's fast enough and MUCH smaller!

Anyway, I tried to play an album on my Squeezebox 3 that is in mpc format and it failed to play. Looking in /usr/share/squeezeboxserver/Bin/arm-linux there's no mpddec file like there is in /usr/share/squeezeboxserver/Bin/i386-linux.
Since /etc/squeezeboxserver/convert.conf refers to mpddec for mpc files, I suppose I need mpddec from somewhere, but does it exist for the Pi?

I did notice that the apt package mpc123 is available, if there's no mpddec can mpc123 be used instead?

I think wmadec is also missing, since while all my Squeezeboxen will happily play wma files natively, I can't play them back on my iOS iPeng players, since they require the files to be transcoded by the RPi server.

Can anyone let me know what I need to do to get the mpc and wma files transcoded on the RPi server?

Thanks

[bpa]

Can anyone let me know what I need to do to get the mpc and wma files transcoded on the RPi server?

For wma. Install mplayer using apt-get and then on LMS install the PlayWMA plugin.

[rickwookie]

Thanks for that bpa, although to be honest since my Squeezeboxen can natively decode wma it's only relevant for playing on my iPeng player when I'm away from home and accessing remotely.

I fear that 'apt-get install mplayer' may just melt my 2GB SD card:

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  esound-common fontconfig-config libaa1 libaacs0 libasyncns0 libaudiofile1
  libavformat53 libbluray1 libcaca0 libcdparanoia0 libdca0 libdirectfb-1.2-9
  libdrm-nouveau1a libdrm-radeon1 libdrm2 libdvdnav4 libdvdread4 libenca0
  libesd0 libfontconfig1 libfribidi0 libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx
  libglapi-mesa libgpm2 libice6 libjack-jackd2-0 libjson0 liblircclient0
  liblzo2-2 libmpeg2-4 libopenal-data libopenal1 libpostproc52 libpulse0
  libsdl1.2debian libsm6 libsmbclient libsndfile1 libts-0.0-0 libx11-6
  libx11-data libx11-xcb1 libxau6 libxcb-glx0 libxcb1 libxdamage1 libxdmcp6
  libxext6 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxinerama1 libxtst6 libxv1 libxvmc1
  libxxf86dga1 libxxf86vm1 mplayer tsconf x11-common

Since I had to run the SqueezePlug 'remove X' script in the first place to even get LMS to fit.

Is wmadec Windows only, and is there no lightweight alternative for my Pi?

For the mpc album, I can't play it at all. Any suggestions.

[bpa]

I think life would be simpler for you if you bought a 4Gb card - they are quite cheap now ( about 5 euro here in Ireland must be cheaper in the UK).

mplayer is media player and a bit of a "swiss army knife" which can built with support for a wide variety of video and audio codecs. Unfortunately the version built for RaspPi has practically all the options chosen. You have two choices either build your own smaller version or else install mplayer and delete the libraries that you will not be using as I think they are not loaded at started but only when needed.

wmadec is Windows only and it hooks into many many Windows x86 libraries so it is not really a small application and not portable to ARM.

I'm not familiar with mpc.

[Mnyb]

Is converting the mpc files to flac an option ?

With that kind of small server with non x86 cpu I would make it piont to avoid transcoding if I can .
Mpc is kind of odd so you would only gain compatibility and loose nothing by converting them to flac .

[ralphy]

Since I had to run the SqueezePlug 'remove X' script in the first place to even get LMS to fit.

Is wmadec Windows only, and is there no lightweight alternative for my Pi?

For the mpc album, I can't play it at all. Any suggestions.

I have a self built mplayer binary for squeezeplug which supports wma and mpc files and is only 9 MB. It's softfloat, but I should work on armhf as well.

It only has a few package dependancies which you'd need to install manually, actually they may already be installed.

sudo apt-get install libmad0 libncurses5 libasound2

Untar the file into /usr/share/logitechmediaserver/Bin/arm-linux directory and install bpa's WMAPlay plugin for wma playback.

For mpc support add these lines to custom-convert.conf in the same directory as the system convert.conf.
I think it's /etc/logitechmediaserver, but I use lms from git so I can't confirm the default full path to these folders.
The file might need to be created and for mp3 decoding you also need to install shineenc and the lame script.

Extract the shine tar file into the same place as mplayer above, not what's listed in that post as it's for 7.6

mpc mp3 * *
        # F:{PATH=%f}R:{PATH=%F}B:{BITRATE=-B %B}T:{START=-ss %s}U:{DURATION=-endpos %w}
        [mplayer] -really-quiet -vc null -vo null $START$ $DURATION$ -nocache -ao pcm:file=/dev/fd/4 $PATH$ 4>&1 1>/dev/null | [lame] --silent -q $QUALITY$ $RESAMPLE$ -v $BITRATE$ - -

mpc flc * *
        # F:{PATH=%f}R:{PATH=%F}T:{START=-ss %s}U:{DURATION=-endpos %w}
        [mplayer] -really-quiet -vc null -vo null $START$ $DURATION$ -nocache -ao pcm:file=/dev/fd/4 $PATH$ 4>&1 1>/dev/null | [flac] -cs --totally-silent --compression-level-4 -

mpc pcm * *
        # F:{PATH=%f}R:{PATH=%F}T:{START=-ss %s}U:{DURATION=-endpos %w}
        [mplayer] -really-quiet -vc null -vo null $START$ $DURATION$ -nocache -ao pcm:file=/dev/fd/4 $PATH$ 4>&1 1>/dev/null