W32Codecs - Howto

I recently needed to come to the rescue of one of our club members the other day having some trouble playing some video content, so thought I would spell out what you need to add to get things working properly for both 32bit and 64bit systems for Jaunty Jackalope. Having the Flash Plugin now working on 32bit Firefox is great in Jauty Jackalope and only requires the installation of ubuntu-restricted-extras. Unless you wish to continue using video with Totem which is the default plugin for Firefox we suggest you change it there are many plugin's you can convert to but mplayer in our opinion seem to work the best with most everything but the choice is yours.

#> cd /usr/lib/firefox/plugins
#> sudo rm libtotem*

Note the above actually removes the links to the plugin libraries not the files themselves, so deleting them will only effect Firefox no other browser or system. You can check this is true using ls -al on the command line.

#> sudo apt-get install mozilla-mplayer mplayer

This will load the basic player MPlayer and the Firefox plugin also we will still need to install the various Codecs files that allow video content to be played using a variety of file formats (wmv, ogg, mpg).

Lets install the restricted libraries available from the Ubuntu repositories, if you haven't yet done so please visit the Synaptic Package Manager, typing your own password rather than a root password should allow you access. Ensure all the Ubuntu Repositories are activated.

#> sudo apt-get update
#> sudo apt-get upgrade
#> sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mpegdemux gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg rar xvid4conf mjpegtools

Now this is pretty much the best we can do with the Ubuntu repositories if we need the window 32/64 codecs we need to go elsewhere

Intrepid Installation

#> sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
#> sudo wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Jaunty Installation

#> sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/jaunty.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
#> sudo wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

With this very important task completed we can now go about installing the code but first we need to activate the repository which we enable in Synaptic Package Manager this you will find in the Third Party Settings enable all repositories in this section.

#> sudo apt-get update
#> sudo apt-get upgrade
#> sudo apt-get install w32codecs libdvdread3 debhelper fakeroot build-essential non-free-codecs transcode avifile-divx-plugin
#> sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

An added benefit of installing the above libraries and applications is that the BBC Iplayer at BBCIPlayer works.

One very small remaining thing to do is to edit a file located in your home directory for MPlayer application the purpose of this is to enable video files to play from certain websites such as Channelchooser and EMusic TV

#> sudo vim .mplayer/mplayerplug-in.conf ##mplayer is preceded with a dot "." as this is a hidden folder.

You will need to edit this file and alter certain entries, this config file does not exist anywhere else other than the home directories which needs to be altered for each user on the system.