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Unlike DVD playback, (which requires only a single library to work) Linux applications routinely use several different engines to provide MP3 playback, the most important ones being Gstreamer and Xine. Once you add support for one engine, all programs that rely on that engine will have support as well. Both Gstreamer and Xine use fffmpeg, which is a program that can convert audio (and video) from one format to another, so the various audio backends use it to process MP3.
Gstreamer is a codec set routinely used for GNOME-based players like Totem. While Totem is able to play open formats out of the box, it requires additional plugins to handle proprietary media formats like MP3; Without Gstreamer, some media players are only nominally functional. To enable this support, you need to install two packages: gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly and gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg. Gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg is a plugin for ffmpeg and gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly is the package that contains proprietary non-free media codecs (compared to the gstreamer0.10-plugins-good package which contains codecs for open media formats) for Gstreamer. On Ubuntu, both packages may be found in the Universe repository.
For players that use the Xine engine, you will need libxine1-ffmpeg package to be installed. Like the gstreamer packages, it can be found in the Universe repository.
Playing Windows Media files has always been a tricky situation on Linux. Most Windows Media Audio (WMA) files work fine on Linux (barring any sort of DRM protection) but getting audio to work properly in Windows Media Video (WMV) is a bit harder. Mplayer currently supports WMV up through version 8, but WMV9 support is still sketchy.
Fortunately, WMV is implemented more effectively in the w32codecs package. (if you are running a 64-bit operating system, you will need the w64codecs package instead) This package cannot be found in the regular Ubuntu repositories, but can be located in those used by Medibuntu, the media-focused Ubuntu derivative. The following procedure will instruct you how to obtain the w32codecs or w64codecs package:
1. Open a terminal.
2. Run “sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/jaunty.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list”
3. Add the Medibuntu GPG signature and refresh your repositories: “sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update”
4. The appropriate codecs have now been installed.
Furthermore, the Medibuntu repositories also contain a working libdvdcss2 package, so once you have added the Medibuntu repository, you are able to install DVD playback capability if you have not already done so by running “sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2”. This method differs from the previous section in that you are able to acquire a working libdvdcss2 package from Medibuntu once you have configured its repository instead of assembling the package yourself.
Additional proprietary codecs like Apple Quicktime and Real are included in the w32codecs and w64codecs packages.
These days, Flash support is essential since many popular Web 2.0 services (like Youtube and Hulu) make heavy use of it. Currently, the Linux implementations of Flash are quite good, and there are several different options to choose from.
If you want to avoid proprietary software altogether, you should consider Gnash, a free open source implementation of Adobe Flash. Gnash has excellent support of typical SWF animation and offers good support for Flash Video, (flv) the current standard for online video content. However, the support for FLV in Gnash is not quite perfect yet, so some videos might have sound issues as a consequence. If your system does not have x86 CPU architecture, Gnash is your only option since the official Adobe Plugin only supports x86. To acquire Gnash and the Firefox plugin for it on Ubuntu, run “sudo apt-get install gnash mozilla-plugin-gnash”. After that, you will still need the gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad package to watch Youtube videos. (your package manager will acquire it for you, so there is no need to try to install it yourself)
For the best possible support and compatibility, you should rely on Adobe's own Flash player plugin. It has excellent support for swf and flv, with the only downside being that it is closed-source. To acquire the latest version of the flash player plugin for any distro, perform the following procedure:
1. Navigate to http://www.get.adobe.com/flashplayer
2. Select the “tar.gz for Linux” option from the list
3. Click “Agree and Install Now” when it appears
4. Download and extract the tarball (it doesn't matter where you extract to)
5. Open a terminal and navigate to the directory you extracted to. There should be two files in it: flashplayer-installer and libflashplayer.so.
6. The flashplayer-installer file is a shell script. Initiate it by running “./flashplayer-installer” or “sh flashplayer-installer”.
7. Once the script starts, press Enter to continue. Close any browser processes that are running if you have not done so already.
8. The script will ask whether it should install to the .mozilla folder in your home directory. Allow it to do so by typing “y” and then hit Enter.
9. The installation process is complete. Choose “n” to terminate the script.
MIDI audio has already had its heyday in the mid 1990s, back before MP3 audio and broadband made sharing high-quality music possible. At the time, large bulky WAV files were the only source of realistic audio, and it didn't take very many of them to fill up the small hard drives of the day (and you could just forget about transferring them over the standard 33.6kbs or 56kbs dialup) In those simpler times, synthesized MIDI renditions of songs were popular because they allowed full songs (sans lyrics) to be transferred easily over low bandwidth, and personal websites full of MIDI files were commonplace.
Even though MIDI is a mostly forgotten media format today, it still has its place. If you create or work with ringtones on your computer or are into retro/vintage gaming, it is sometimes necessary to be able to play MIDI audio on your computer. Linux does not offer MIDI playback out of the box due to its relative obscurity and fairly low demand, but it can be done through a program called Timidity.
Timidity is a program that runs as a daemon process in the background and allows other software to make use of your computer's MIDI capabilities. (most computers still have a MIDI synthesizer, although some are better than others) Timidity is not a specific player; rather, it allows MIDI to play where it is needed whether it be through a conventional media player or through a game. If Timidity is installed and the daemon is running, MIDI audio will “just work.” Timidity is able to handle MOD audio as well.
To install Timidity on Ubuntu, run “sudo apt-get install timidity”.
Comments are closed on this article
Devo85x
July 20, 2009 at 6:23pm
sudo apt-get -y install vlc
&
sudo apt-get -y install flashplugin-nonfree
:)
damiananderson
July 18, 2009 at 3:03pm
so no one has ever heard of Linux mint or sabayon linux ? damn there
are so many distros
out there stop using one, 99% of them are free and almost all of them
use live CD environment or can be boot from usb drives. dont be afraid
go to these sites , http://distrowatch.com/ and
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ and have some free fun with other linux
distros other than ubuntu
Gadwil
July 18, 2009 at 10:57am
You could just use the PerfectBuntu script to automatically install media codecs and allow DVD playback.
PerfectBuntu found here.
http://www.category5.tv/content/blogcategory/15/77/
Just download and go to whereever it is saved and just ./perfectbuntu and it runs just fine. Works I believe from 8.04 and up.
PhynaeusClaw
July 17, 2009 at 10:32pm
Thanks for the article. I've been using Ubuntu for almost a year now and didn't realize that I could actually play windows media files at all. Then again, I never really had an interest... In any case, it is a useful article and I have updated some of my libraries because of it. Thanks!
I want to add that I like Songbird as a music player. It's still rough around the edges but it gets the job done. It works with Last.fm and ShoutCast. And it integrates web content very nicely by pulling up album info, news, photos, lyrics, and purchase opportunites from the web automatically for you. It's a young application that will definitely grow into a great media player someday.
BTW, it is available for Windows, Linux (32 & 64 bit), and (GASP!!) OS X.
http://getsongbird.com/
For Debian install package that works on Ubuntu go here:
http://www.getdeb.net/app/Songbird
Vegan
July 16, 2009 at 5:31pm
This is why I can't take the people who suggest that the entire world switch to Linux seriously. Can you imagine your mom figuring any of this stuff out? Absolutely not. Windows may not be the most efficient thing in the world, but at least it's easy.
ETNPNYS
July 17, 2009 at 7:36am
EXACTLY. Just to play DVDs and WMA?
Now, I'm a pretty savvy user with a lot of technical knowledge, and I only recently was able to use Ubuntu enough to run it as my main OS in my office. ...And that doesn't mean that it doesn't have its quirks - it's just ridiculously faster than Windows XP on my office PC's hardware (and prettier).
However, there are a few things that this article completely fails to mention, like the ability to [easily] configure your Ubuntu box to play your audio files stored somewhere else on a Windows PC. None of the above audio programs supports configuring it so that your music library is stored on a network drive. ...So you have to mount the network drive as a local drive, make sure that it's mounted every time at startup, and THEN you can tell your audio player where to look for files as if they're on your same machine. In retrospect it sounds easy enough, right? But why on earth can't you just tell it to use the folder located at \\HTPC\Music that has been shared for eons?
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Deanjo
July 16, 2009 at 5:06pm
Seriously guys, stop using Linux as a synonym for Ubuntu and vise versa. This guide only applies to the *buntu crap and does no good for any other real distro. If your gonna write a buntu article then label it as such and don't use a bloody "How to in Linux" title. In openSUSE for example all the above is done with one-click and the installer installs all the restricted packages and adds the needed repos. This guide doesn't do jack shit for Fedora or Mandriva users as well.
ETNPNYS
July 17, 2009 at 8:25am
I agree that "Linux" and "Ubuntu" should not be used synonymously - but you have to understand that as far as desktop users go, Ubuntu has the majority of the installed base. To call them all "*buntu crap" is an injustice to the teams that spend countless hours developing what has become the most mainstream Linux distro ever... Sure, YOU think they're crap because you've gotten Billix to run well on your hardware, but that doesn't even scratch the surface. Don't spread your distate for the most adopted because you're a fanboy of one of the others.
When I moved to Linux on my office PC, Ubuntu was the last one that I wanted to try out, but I ended up resting on it because the community is so much larger that the odds are so much greater that somebody has your issue in Ubuntu than any other distro. I mowed through multiple installations of Mandriva 2009.1, Xubuntu, and Kubuntu trying to find one that will work well, and finally rested on Ubuntu. Even the other *buntu distros didn't compare in the amount of resources available to Ubuntu users.
<><
Deanjo
July 20, 2009 at 6:17am
Sorry but Ubuntu does not have the majority of installed desktop linux share, majority = 50% +1. Yes it does have the largest percentage of installed desktop users but it does not by any means come close to being a majority even if you were to combine all the *buntu derivatives together. OpenSUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Debian, PCLinuxOS, Gentoo etc all have huge followings as well. Canical itself contributes next to NOTHING back to linux in development. It's one of the poorest contributors back to mainline projects. Even Sony for brying out loud commits back to the kernel then Canical does. Your testing of 4 distro's before settling on ubuntu is a bit of a joke. 3 of them are the same thing except for the desktop environement. That's hardly a sampling with enough variety to declare ubuntu as king.
For someone that says "pretty savvy user with a lot of technical knowledge" but you can't even figure out how to access smb shares through media programs with out mounting it as a drive speaks volumes about your choice of distro and your level of knowledge in *nix OS's. Hint: SMB:// goes a long way.
ETNPNYS
August 10, 2009 at 12:59pm
Dude the projects themselves say that they do not support this feature. I'm not being an idiot.
laynlow200
July 16, 2009 at 4:58pm
I've always found: apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras a lot easier all in one.
installs:
including MP3, DVD, Flash, Quicktime, WMA and WMV, including both
standalone files and content embedded in web pages.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats
