eric’s extremeboredom

Having trouble playing DVDs, MP3s, DiVX, AAC/MP4, XViD or WMV audio/video files on your Ubuntu Breezy system? Since these fomats are all proprietary, the companies that invented them require that developers purchase a (very expensive) license to legally decode (play back) files in these formats (with the exception of XViD which has had a completely different set of licence/patent-related problems), so Ubuntu cannot legally include these codecs in the base install.

Step 1. Enable the Restricted/Universe/Multiverse package repositories

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list (as root) and add the following line to the bottom of the file:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ breezy universe restricted multiverse

Step 2. Install packages

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.8-plugins gstreamer-0.8-plugins-multiverse gstreamer0.8-pitfdll

This will install a whole crap load of codecs.

Step 3. Find the W32Codecs package and install it

The Microsoft ELUA forbids redistribution of the windows media codecs, so it is illegal to use them unless you own a windows license. Assuming you have an extra license, you can find a deb package online fairly easily. Once you find it, install it as such:

$ sudo dpkg -i w32codecs_20050412-0.0_i386.deb

You should now be able to play most windows media files.

Step 4. Find and install libdvdcss

Almost all commercial DVDs that you buy in a store are encrypted to prevent people from making copies. To legally decrypt (and therefore playback) a DVD you have to buy a (very expensive) license from the group that maintains the specification. Hackers were able to reverse-engineer the encryption that DVDs use, but due to the DCMA it is illegal to use this unlicenced reverse-engineered DVD library in the United States (other countries have similar laws), making it illegal to watch DVDs that you paid for on a Linux system.

If you are in a country that does not have insane copyright laws, you can find a libdvdcss package for debian/ubuntu online fairly easily and install it the same way as you install the w32codecs package.

Step 5. Install additional media players (Optional)

If you want. you can install some additional media players.

Out of the box Totem is configured to use the gstreamer library. After much extensive research, it has been determined that there is a lot of “suck” surrounding the version of gstreamer in Breezy, so you might will have a lot more luck switching to the xine backend as such:

$ sudo apt-get install totem-xine

The VLC Media Player is very popular:

$ sudo apt-get install vlc

MPlayer generally does the best job of playing windows media files (assuming you have w32codecs installed):

$ sudo apt-get install mplayer-586

And let’s not forget Xine:

$ sudo apt-get install xine-ui

And you might want to forget this one, but sometimes it’s unavoidable…

cd ~/Desktop
sudo apt-get install libstdc++5
wget ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/pool/main/r/realplay/realplayer_10.0.6-0.0_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i realplayer_10.0.6-0.0_i386.deb

(buffering… buffering…buffering…error! :)

If you agree that the current state of audio/video formats is pretty bad, support Xiph, who has developed an open-source and completly free audio codec (vorbis – sometimes refered to as “ogg”) as well as an open/free video codec (theora).

Categorized as Open Source, Technology, Open Source, Ubuntu