# Unable to play .m4a files with Rhythmbox or gstreamer



## bdk (Apr 11, 2020)

I am looking to play back my collection of .m4a music files that I've moved over from my old Windows laptop to my FreeBSD laptop. However when I attempt to import them into `Rhythmbox`, or play them directly with `gst-play-1.0`. I get error text that ends with:


```
Missing decoder: MPEG-4 AAC (audio/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)4, framed=(booe, stream-format=(string)raw, level=(string)2, base-profile=(string)lc, (string)lc, codec_data=(buffer)1210, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2)
```

I have the following packages installed via `pkg`:

```
faac-1.29.9.2_3                MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AAC audio encoder
faad2-2.8.8,1                  MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AAC audio decoder
gstreamer1-plugins-faac-1.16.2 GStreamer MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AAC encoder plugin
gstreamer1-plugins-faad-1.16.2 GStreamer MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AAC decoder plugin
```

I did find one result on Google where someone had the same issue, but for them, installing the above packages seems to have resolved the issue for them, but it has not for me. I assume I'm missing something else that I should have installed but I haven't been able to figure out what. Any advice would be appreciated.


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## T-Daemon (Apr 12, 2020)

Try deleting the rhytmbox database and rescan the music collection , as playback of m4a files has been managed that way in this thread: Thread 55572


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## bdk (Apr 12, 2020)

T-Daemon said:


> Try deleting the rhytmbox database and rescan the music collection , as playback of m4a files has been managed that way in this thread: Thread 55572



Thanks, that was the first thing I had tried and I believe it will be the ultimate solution for rhythmbox import once I get gstreamer to recognize the codec, but first I need to get those files playable so the reimport will pick them up.


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