MIDI playback on Mint 17 - SOLVED

[gingertom5005]

I have just installed Mint 17 Mate 64 bit on my system having running Mint 13 32 bit very satisfactorily.

My problem is that I can't now play MIDI files. I have installed Timidity but to no avail. When I try to play MIDI files all get is a message that says first that the system is trying to find multimedia plugins and then says it needs gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad (i386). Any ideas how I can get my MIDI files to play?

[gtsfer]

If I remember this correctly Timidity runs from the command line. See this link... http://blog.thameera.com/playing-midi-files-in-ubuntu/. There are other midi players that should be available right through Synaptic Package Manager. Playmidi is one that I saw, you can search in SPM and see what's easily available for your distro.

[gingertom5005]

Thanks for this but it hasn't solved the problem.

[gtsfer]

You'd probably be ok installing gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad from Synaptic Package Manager (if it shows up in your Cinnamon 17 64-bit). The name is misleading a little, the description (in Synaptic or via a Google search) says...

"GStreamer Bad Plug-ins is a set of plug-ins that aren't up to par compared
to the rest. They might be close to being good quality, but they're missing
something - be it a good code review, some documentation, a set of tests, a
real live maintainer, or some actual wide use."

As it turns out I have it installed myself in LMDE so it's not going to break your system. Just thought I'd suggest something else as this isn't the best plugin, but it's what Timidity uses. I forget why I needed to installed it myself (it wasn't for Timidity) but it's being used in one of my audio applications or other.

[kyphi]

You have 2 options:

1. See my previous post: http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=154394 regarding the requirements for Timidity.

2. Install the plugin for VLC

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-fluidsynth

Then you can get midi playback via VLC

[gingertom5005]

Wow - works fine, thanks. VLC is fine for the MIDI files now.

[kyphi]

Timidity and its interfaces coupled with freepats work well too, you know.

Anyway, I am glad that you can enjoy your midi files. Have you looked at Warren Trachtman's site: http://www.trachtman.org/ragtime/

[gtsfer]

Timidity and its interfaces coupled with freepats work well too, you know.

Kyphi, that's an excellent and easy fix. I had no idea that this VLC plugin worked for midi. Bookmarked for future reference.