Codecs

From LinuxNewbie

One of the most common video and audio related questions is, "What can't I play _____ like Windows?"

This is the time when we pull out the hidden camara video. You see, Windows couldn't play that file either. At some time in the past that person install Quicktime or Real Player or DiVX or ______. In this article I hope to clarify how to install codecs so your linux can also play (or record) those formats.

Lets start with how to play most formats. Visit http://www.mplayerhq.hu and surf to the download page. Scroll down to the Codecs section and download the essential codecs package.

Once it has completed downloading, open a command prompt (shell, console, bash) and cd to the directory the package was downloaded to. Use tar to uncompress the files. They will uncompress to a new directory with a name similar to the archive name (essential-20050115 in my case). cd in to that directory and then run su to become root. As root, cp * /usr/local/lib/codecs/ and viola you can play wma, wmv, Quicktime, RealPlayer and other common formats with players such as xmms (audio, gui), xine (video, gui), or mplayer (audio, video, command line).

Codecs for encoding I will list as another page. codecs for encoding