When I try to play any MP3 encoded song in Rhythmbox, the seek bar is disabled. Upon trying to play the same files in Totem, the same problem appears again.
I think that the problem started after following option C in this guide, and then undoing it.
I've tried reinstalling gstreamer0.1-plugin-ugly
, gstreamer0.1-ffmpeg
and gstreamer0.1-fluendo-mp3
, which are the packages I think Rhythmbox is asking for upon playing a MP3 encoded file.
Running Ubuntu 10.04, recently updated.
Best Answer
The
-ffmpeg
package allows playback of mp3s, but not seeking. It's possible that if you have both-plugins-ugly
and-ffmpeg
installed, Rhythmbox (or any other gstreamer-based media player) will choose to use-ffmpeg
istead of theugly
plugin, and you will not be able to seek.gstreamer0.1-plugin-ugly
should cover all of your mp3 needs, so you can safely uninstall thegstreamer0.1-ffmpeg
package.For more background on the issue, see a similar bug reported against Banshee, and the much older gstreamer bug it was eventually closed as a duplicate of. Also note that an mp3 parser is now included in the
-good
gstreamer plugin, so this issue should not affect newer versions of Ubuntu.