MP3/AAC not offered as encoding formats in Preferences, even with encoders+gstreamer plugins for these installed

Closing because this can be done in audio profiles

(In reply to comment #1)
> Closing because this can be done in audio profiles

this is not a proper reason! Ubuntu is suposed ot be usability focused...And
typing some google-for-it text in gnome-conf isn't what can be considered an
usable system. Yes this is a Bug and it needs to be fixed! or else, there should
be a GUI to configure the audio-properties apart from the gnomeconf dialog.

gnome-audio-profiles-properties is the UI for that, what's wrong with it ?

no reply, bug closed. Feel free to reopen if the asked details if you think
that's still an issue.

"gnome-audio-profiles-properties is the UI for that, what's wrong with it ?"

I'll reply, if he won't.

GAPP is not much of a UI at all, and requires the user to find and type in some "google-for-it" text string that appears to make no sense to a non-coder. Additionally, one has to make a profile for every different MP3 bitrate (should one wish to change it); this whole "profile" garbage really does need to be re-thought.

Goobox does this much better - you select what kind of file you want (ogg, mp3, wav, flac, whatever) and have sliders for the bitrates. (It doesn't do VBR stuff in GUI, which sucks, there should be a checkbox for that, but still, it gets MUCH, MUCH closer to "useable" than the horribly failed profile metaphor does).

Basically, I agree and can make arguments for the original poster's point, which is this: The GUI for encoding filetypes/bitrates (gnome-audio-profiles-properties) is so terrible that it can be classified as a huge bug. It's not useable. It took me close to an hour of reading to even figure out what I needed to activate MP3, and close to another to figure out what Gstreamer needed to make the MP3's I wanted. All of this could have been done with about 10 seconds worth of slider interaciton.

gonzo, I agree that the UI of gnome-audio-profiles-properties could use some work, that issue should be fixed now though, a mp3 profile is shipped by default with the multiverse package shipped the plugin used for encoding

Firstly: I apologize for my comment yesterday. I was in a gruff mood, and I allowed that to carry over into Launchpad.

Secondly: An MP3 profile did not get added to my collection of profiles - I have both bad-multiverse and ugly-multiverse installed. Should I reinstall, or...?

Ccing slomo who did the package change for the profile

Yes for some reason it doesn't work properly... I only thought it worked fine because I had the profile added before

Ok, it's currently no possible to add a profile via a gconf schema or on another way on the system level :(

This doesn't sound right. If its not possible to add a profile programatically, how did the default four profiles get there?

SOMEthing has the default four profile definitions in it - that package should be edited. (Or, ideally, profiles should be done away with altogether - I thing they add an extra layer to something which is complex enough for the average user who's probably already used to choosing filetype/compression strength by hand on sites like iTunes and allofmp3 anyhow).

The profiles schemas are added by gnome-media (iirc).
You have a) one gconf directory per profile and b) additionally a list that contains all profile names.

In the schema you have all gconf directories and the list which statically has all default profiles. It isn't possible via another schema to add additional values to that list, it's only possible to do this when setting it by hand as a user so we can't ship anything for the profiles in another package.

We could ship more profiles with gnome-media (again iirc) but for them to be functional we must depend on all needed elements which can't be as most of them are not in main (i.e. lame / faac). So I see no way to do this cleanly.

IMHO it's a design bug in the media profiles and I'll try to get this fixed for Gnome 2.16 with upstream

Maybe this will make its way from Banshee into all of Gnome eventually:

http://abock.org/2007/01/06/audio-profile-configuration-for-the-masses/

That has been fixed by gnome-media upstream, the feisty version will list profiles for those when the corresponding plugins are installed

I now see the profiles listed in /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/profiles, but they're not added to /system/gstreamer/0.10/audio/global/profile_list, and they don't show up in g-a-p-p until they're added to that list.

the profiles are listed only if the corresponding plugins are installed, you might want to try with a new configuration, if the one of your user has been modified it'll take over the default list

I think this will cause problems for a lot of users who have manually added an mp3 profile using g-a-p-p.

if they added an mp3 profile that's a good reason to not add an another one then

But it's not a good reason to not add an AAC profile.

program don't change the user configuration, if the program was adding AAC profile when it's not listed it would mean you could not remove it from your list