Pacpl not working correctly.

[citizen]

I installed pacpl from the Kubuntu repo and it claims it was installed correctly. However in Dolphin it needs a file to display in the context menu. I installed that as well. When I try and extract audio to mp3 or flac from an mp4 video, it processes fine (no errors), but trying to play the file results in nothing. It immediately starts and stops. Not sure where the audio is or why this happens. Anyone else use this tool? It's amazing when it works, and I hate command line tools so this is great.
Any suggestions as to a solution? Thanks.

[rab0171610]

This is a perl script. It runs in the command line, I assume you are trying to say you installed some file that allows you to use it in dolphin from a context menu instead of from the command line. I assume there is an option in that context menu that says to extract the audio from a video file? Reading the man pages for the script it does not say anywhere that it supports ripping audio from a video file but from cd's themselves. Unless I missed something:
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...1/pacpl.1.html
Maybe you know something I don't.
Otherwise you can use the *GASP* command line tool ffmpeg to extract the audio:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...eo-with-ffmpeg
take note of the command to extract audio and video separately at the same time if that applies to you.

To extract the audio stream without re-encoding:

ffmpeg -i input-video.avi -vn -acodec copy output-audio.aac

• -vn is no video.
• -acodec copy says use the same audio stream that's already in there.

Read the output to see what codec it is, to set the right filename extension.

[rab0171610]

Their manpage leaves something out because I see it on their home page:
https://votoxin.wixsite.com/pacpl

It can also extract audio from the following video extensions:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RM, RV, ASF, DivX, MPG, MKV, MPEG, AVI, MOV, OGM, OGV, QT, VCD,

SVCD, M4V, NSV, NUV, PSP, SMK, VOB, FLV, WEBM and WMV.

Have you tried reaching out to them for support? That seems like a more appropriate place to go for help IMO.
https://votoxin.wixsite.com/pacpl/contact

CONTACT
Philip Lyons
Developer/Maintainer

[rab0171610]

Also since you are looking for a graphical option you could try VLC:

How to extract the audio into an MP3 format from an MP4 video file using VLC media player.

1. Open VLC media player.
2. From the toolbar select Media, then Convert/Save.
3. Next in the File Selection box click Add and select your MP4 file.
4. Then click Convert/Save.
5. Next from the Profile dropdown box select Audio - MP3
6. Finally, in the destination box select Browse and then the location you want the MP3 file to get saved. Don't forget to delete the .mp4 file extension from the end of the file name, before saving.
7. Click Start.

VLC will now open a new window and start extracting the audio from the video file; VLC will save the audio into the location you selected earlier.

[citizen]

Thanks for the reply. I use pacpl in Dolphin, especially for batch converting formats. This is working for audio-2-audio conversion, but not video-2-audio. I do use VLC for single videos only. I'm not aware of it doing batch processes.
I asked here because this forum is where I learned about it many years ago, just hoping people were still using it here.

[rab0171610]

Correct, VLC will not work in batches, so that will not be of help to you. Hopefully someone with some experience with pacpl will weigh in soon. Keep googling as well. Good Luck!
The main reason I am suggesting an alternative is to see if the problem is with the particular video file/format or pacpl, i.e. if other tools work the file is fine and the problem is indeed with pacpl. It could help determine if you are missing a codec or decoder that works with pacpl.

[rab0171610]

There was a bug report filed about this in 2018:
https://sourceforge.net/p/pacpl/bugs/24/

I remember that it was possible to right click an mp4 video and select "convert to mp3" from pacpl's context menu in KDE4. Now I am using KDE5 (KDE neon) and pacpl does not do this any more.

I don't know if it was ever fixed?
User stated:

I think I found the bug. The program seems to insist to use avconv, but that package is not used any more in Ubuntu > 14.x:


pacpl --decoder mp4
Perl Audio Converter - 5.0.1 decoders for: mp4 avconv -> faad -> installed (default) ffmpeg -> installed mplayer -> installed


If I force pacpl to use ffmpeg, all goes well:

pacpl --to mp3 --encoder ffmpeg --decoder ffmpeg video.mp4 Perl Audio Converter - 5.0.1 Konvertierung: video.mp4 -> mp3 Total files converted: 1, failed: 0


So, how do I tell papcl to use ffmpeg as standard encode/decoder in its config file?

So that makes me wonder, is this still the state of Ubuntu/pacpl with regards to ffmpeg/avconf?
One way to know might be to run the above command:

pacpl --decoder mp4

and post the output here. The developer never seemed to respond to the bug report.

You could also try installing from source from their homepage via git. The link is on their downloads page. That version is newer than the one in the Ubuntu repos but if the bug was never addressed at that time it is doubtful anything has changed.

[citizen]

I did run those --encoder, --decoder to check and installed avconf but was still having problems. I also try to avoid building from scratch, it's just not my skill. I will have to try and contact the developer.

[rab0171610]

I will have to try and contact the developer.

The website says to use that contact link I posted previously.

I Found A Bug! Where / Who Do I Report It To?

Please submit any and all bug reports using the contact page. Include as much information as possible detailing what you were doing at the time and how to best reproduce the problem.

https://votoxin.wixsite.com/pacpl/contact

[jlittle]

Correct, VLC will not work in batches

Are you sure? Maybe the command line version, cvlc, could be used in a bash script. I suggest running this in a konsole:

cvlc --help

[rab0171610]

Maybe the command line version, cvlc, could be used in a bash script

OP prefers to use a GUI and not command line tools. The gui, VLC, does not have batch mode by default. When I suggested VLC I was not aware that Citizen needed batch processing. FFMPEG could also be used in a script or a perl script is probably out there already to use ffmpeg to batch strip audio from MP4 files, but OP prefers a graphical program. OP also prefers not to compile software. Feel free to write a bash script using cvlc to process multiple files in batch mode for the OP. Citizen may find it useful after all.

[claydoh]

So what we are missing is info on the specific Dolphin context menu that uses pacpl, which could be what is broken

However in Dolphin it needs a file to display in the context menu. I installed that as well.

Plus whatever that file is.

[Snowhog]

Package: pacpl (6.1.0-1) [universe]

https://packages.ubuntu.com/focal/pacpl

[claydoh]

Which Dolphin addon context menu? The one that is using the perl script.

[Bings]

SoundKonverter can do batch conversion of video to audio. It also adds a context menu entry in dolphin to add files to it.