All I get is Helix cannot play Mp3 files.. blah blah... when I was running beta3, I could play MP3's via gstreamer, but now even gstreamer is not detected, even though it's installed.  Ideas..?

gstreamer support is not included for 1.4.0, due to no maintainer for a long time - use xine or helix. gstreamer support should be back in later amarok versions.

Okay, but amaroK 1.4 doesn't find Xine either.  Helix is useless becuase it doesn't play MP3 files.

I'm also using FC5 and I've installed these packages: xine, xine-lib, xine-lib-devel.  What else must I do before amaroK 1.4 will recognise Xine?

on fc5, install amarok-engines-nonfree  (I think is the name of it)

And helix engine plays mp3 if you install realplayer and use its codecs instead of the ones supplied with helixplayer.

Unfortunately, there aren't any other codecs.  I installed both RealPlayer and Helix, but to no avail.

did you configure the helix engine in amarok settings  to point to the right paths for your distro?

dangle_wtf wrote:on fc5, install amarok-engines-nonfree  (I think is the name of it)

And helix engine plays mp3 if you install realplayer and use its codecs instead of the ones supplied with helixplayer.

Thanks dangle_wtf.  Xine now works well since I've installed "amarok-extras-nonfree".

Now that I've got a choice, which of these output plugins should I use on FC5: "Autodetect", "alsa", "oss", "arts", "esd", "file"?

Autodetect should be fine, and if that doesn't work, try alsa.