Installing the Fluendo MP3 plugin

On December 21st 2005, Fluendo released MP3 plug-in for the GStreamer multimedia framework. The MP3 decoder is available free of charge both for individual end users and GNU/Linux and Unix distribution makers. This will allow playback of the popular MP3 format using many popular open source applications such as Totem Movie Player, Rhythmbox Music Player.

• http://www.fluendo.com/press/releases/PR-2005-05.html
• http://www.fluendo.com/resources/fluendo_mp3.php

Free alternatives to MP3
There are open source alternatives including Ogg Vorbis and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). Both are available in Fedora's package repositories. Fedora cannot include the Fluendo plugin directly because although it is free and open source software, it is not freely redistributable because of its licensing terms.

Procedure

Here is a basic procedure for installing the Fluendo MP3 plugin for GStreamer:

1. Visit Fluendo Webshop and click on "Fluendo MP3 Decoder."
2. Click on "Add to Cart" button and follow by "Checkout" button.
3. Sign in either as a new customer or returning customer. Continue Checkout Procedure to confirm this order. After confirming your order, you can download the codec in various formats. The most comfortable option is RPM.
4. If you've downloaded the file as an RPM, just double-click and install it. Otherwise, extract the tarball and read the documenation/INSTALL.mp3.txt.

   $ ls
   fluendo-mp3-1.i386.tar.bz2
   $ tar -jxvf fluendo-mp3-1.i386.tar.bz2
   fluendo-mp3-i386/
   fluendo-mp3-i386/libgstflump3dec.so
   documentation/INSTALL.mp3.txt
   documentation/LICENSE.mp3.txt
   $ ls
   documentation  fluendo-mp3-1.i386.tar.bz2  fluendo-mp3-i386
   $ cd fluendo-mp3-i386/
   $ ls
   libgstflump3dec.so
   

5. Basically, you need to create a plugins directory under $HOME/.gstreamer-0.10 then copy the binary over.

   $ mkdir -p $HOME/.gstreamer-0.10/plugins
   $ cp libgstflump3dec.so $HOME/.gstreamer-0.10/plugins
   $ chcon --type=textrel_shlib_t $HOME/.gstreamer-0.10/plugins/*.so
   

   The last step may not be necessary if selinux is disabled.
6. If selinux is enabled, make sure that executable stacks are enabled (see System > Administration > SELinux Management > Boolean > Memory Protection > Allow unconfined executables to mark their stack executable).
7. Now, you should be able to play MP3 files using GStreamer applications such as Totem Movie Player, Rhythmbox Music Player, Banshee Music player or the Elisa Media center.

References

If you're experiencing a difficulty installing plugins, please refer to following fluendo ticket.

https://core.fluendo.com/gstreamer/trac/ticket/24