Audacious Media Player Waste of Time

With XMMS going by the wayside as in no more development I decided to see what was available as a replacement in my Gutsy system.
A quick Google search presents me with a media player going by the name Audacious. That name couldn't be a better fit. And I need to point out that you should not confuse this program with Audacity which is a very good audio editor in it's own right.

I open up the Synaptic Package Manager and do a search for Audacious. Mark the main package and try to mark the plug-ins but it's not going to happen. When I marked the main package for installation it popped up an error that said it can't be installed because the plug-ins aren't going to be installed. HUH!!!

I'm trying to mark the plug-ins but the main package error prevents me from adding them on.
So I try marking the plug-ins first. Same problem. I get an error message that the main program isn't going to be installed so the plug-ins can't be installed.
This is NUTS!!!

Alright then. I'll go to their website and see what's going on. I click on the link for their site from a Google search and am presented with a page that says "It Works!"
That's nice. Maybe that page works but the software package sure doesn't. I'm getting this bad feeling. Packages are messed up and the website is down.

Okay! I'll go and grab the .deb packages. Download them and when I try to install them I get the same errors as I did in Synaptic.
GRR....!!!!!!

Okay! Sigh! I'll grab the source code and compile it from there. So I grab the base and plug-in source code and get to work.
Dependency errors! Drat! Or should I say error because it said I was missing one file.
Go and grab the source for that file, compile and install it.
Back to the main package. Another dependency error. After about 5 of these I finally get the main package installed.

Next I install the 3 plug-in packages and thankfully they go much easier.
Now I open up Audacious and it looks suspiciously similar to XMMS even though the developers have said in many articles that they are trying to design a media player that is not a continuation of XMMS and will stand on it's own merit.

I open the file browser and tell Audacious to open an Mp3 file.
ERROR! Either the file permissions are not set properly or you don't have the proper codec installed.
I check to see what plug-ins I have installed. There is a whole list of them but no where do I see one for playing Mp3's. I check on a few forums and apparently that plug-in should be either in the base or dev plug-in package.

So I reinstall the plug-in packages. Still no luck. I go online to see if I can find any other info. Plenty of people posting about problems opening Mp3 files but no real solutions other then to make sure the plug-in packages were installed.

That's when I made my decision. Sudo apt-get remove audacious and all the plug-ins.
I knew this package was a bad omen when I had problems installing through Synaptic and found a dead website.

I'll stick with VLC. It has some quirks but the additional features like audio ripping and video conversion more then make up for those few minor annoyances.
And I have to really wonder what direction Audacious will really take.
Broken .deb packages and websites that are down do not paint a rosey picture for it's future.
I know it left a very bad taste in my mouth and it will take the Audacious developers a lot of work and plenty of add on features for me to even take a look at it again.

In retrospect I did get a good refresher course on compiling and installing from a source package and I honed my skills on finding missing dependency packages.
But the time wasted on a software product of shoddy construction was time I could have used on better things.

TaZMAn

Rip Audio From FLV's Using VLC

Update!
There is a new easy to use tool that will rip audio from videos with a few clicks. Use in conjunction with the Download Helper add-on in the article below.
Link to my blog post for this new tool is;
WinFF Blog Post


If you go to Youtube or one of the many video sites I'm sure you have come across a video that you wanted only the audio from.

Before I give the details I'd highly recommend that you have the Download Helper add-on for Firefox installed. I consider it the best video downloader available. You can get it from here if you don't already have it;

http://www.downloadhelper.net/

Now that we have that out of the way, here is how to extract the audio from the FLV file you downloaded.

This method allows you to extract the audio using VLC graphical user interface. The mp3 file generated will also play in other media players like Winamp, Windows MP and Real:

1. Open the flv file with VLC and stop it as soon as it starts playing.

2. Open the VLC Wizard by clicking on File> Wizard…

3. Select Transcode/Save to File.

4. Select your file from the Playlist.

5. Check only the Transcode Audio checkmark, Leave Video unchecked). Select 192 KB BRate, and MP3 as the Audio codec.

6. Next select MPEG-1 for encapsulation method. Save the file with any name, but with the extension MPG.(Don’t use MP3 at this time). Press Finish.

Once the bar runs it course, repeat steps 1 through 6, except for: a) Choose the MPG file you just created as your input file, b) Change the encapsulation method as RAW and b) Save the new file with the extension MP3.

That's all there is to it. The total time is usually a minute or two depending on the file size and your computer's horse power.

Hope this helps you to grab the song from those music videos. (Grin!)

TaZMAn