Rhythmbox - plays m4a as root, not as user.

I’m having problems getting m4a files to work with Rhythmbox, I’ve installed the good, the bad and the ugly, no vlc repositories, all Packman.

If I try to import or play m4a files, they are skipped. Other formats play fine.

If I use the ‘Video’ app to play them, it wants to install gstreamer files which do not exist. But I’m not bothered about that, because the correct codecs ARE on the system, because…

If I su then run Rhythmbox and import m4a files, they import and play perfectly - so there is something amiss between how I’m setup and the root user, I’m wondering if it’s permissions or something.

Any ideas folks? I know it will work, just not sure where to begin, I have trawled the net but I’m not sure what I’m looking for. I spent half an hour installing and I’ve spent 48 hours stuck on the m4a problem. rotfl!

If it works as root, the necessary codecs/plugins should be installed.
So try to remove the gstreamer plugins cache, this seems to be necessary sometimes to get gstreamer to recognize which plugins are installed:

rm -r ~/.cache/gstreamer-1.0/

After a good night’s sleep and a fresh look, this is the conclusion I ended up with. I found that registry.x86_64.bin was different between root and my account so I removed:

~/.cache/gstreamer-1.0/
~/.cache/rhythmbox/
~/.local/share/gstreamer-1.0/
~/.local/share/rhythmbox/

…for good measure, I then re-imported my music files and everything works. I wonder if the divergence between the root cache and mine was due to the way I was testing/trying to get it to work constantly. Anyway, I’ve learned something new, so thankyou wolfi323 :wink: