Differences between revisions 14 and 15
Revision 14 as of 2006-11-20 15:32:08
Size: 3342
Editor: antidrugue
Comment:
Revision 15 as of 2006-11-20 15:36:05
Size: 3289
Editor: antidrugue
Comment:
Deletions are marked like this. Additions are marked like this.
Line 21: Line 21:
    deb http://debian-multimedia.org/ unstable main

Warning: this page content is terribly out-of-date!

What Are Codecs?

Simply put for most users a codec is a program capable of compressing/decompressing data streams to make them more manageable and consume less bandwidth. To view files that are compressed by codecs, you will need to install a program capable of decompressing them for you.

How to Install Codecs

To install common codecs included in the Debian repositories:

apt-get update
apt-get install gstreamer0.8-plugins gstreamer0.8-ffmpeg gstreamer0.8-mpeg2dec \
vorbis-tools toolame sox ffmpeg gstreamer0.8-misc
gst-register-0.8

To install other codecs not included with Debian (such as mp3 codecs):

  1. Depending on your chosen release, add one of the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list' file:

    deb http://debian-multimedia.org/ sarge main 
    deb http://debian-multimedia.org/ etch main 
    deb http://debian-multimedia.org/ sid main 

This repository has packages for mplayer, gmplayer, and other codecs also. Do your own legal due diligence before using these.

  1. Then do the following:

apt-get update
apt-get install lame lame-extras faad
gst-register-0.8

WMA Codec

There is no WMA codec available in Debian, but you can compile one yourself. Note that this procedure is only known to work with Beep Media Player, for more information see ?BeepMediaPlayerHowTo.

  1. Open up a terminal and download the WMA Plugin:

wget http://download.berlios.de/bmp-plugins/bmp-wma-0.1.1.tar.gz
  1. Extract the files:

tar -xvzf bmp-wma-0.1.1.tar.gz
  1. Change to the directory that was created and compile:

cd bmp-wma-0.1.1
./configure
make
make install

Note: You cannot play WMA files with DRM.

DIVX, Quick Time, Real Video, Windows Media, etc...

  1. Depending on your chosen release, add one of the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

     deb http://debian-multimedia.org/ sarge main 
     deb http://debian-multimedia.org/ etch main
     deb http://debian-multimedia.org/ sid main  
  1. Do the following:

apt-get update
apt-get install w32codecs
  1. To see what codecs are included in w32codecs:

apt-get update
apt-cache show w32codecs

DVD Playback

  1. Depending on your chosen release, add one of the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

     deb http://debian-multimedia.org/ sarge main 
     deb http://debian-multimedia.org/ etch main
     deb http://debian-multimedia.org/ sid main  
  1. Do the following:

apt-get update
apt-get install libdvdcss2 gnome-xine 

You can replace gnome-xine with totem-xine or another program capable of playing back DVDs depending on your taste.

  1. libdvdcss2 is also available as a Debian package directly from its authors:

deb http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sid main

Most media players which are in Debian main, such as kaffeine, will play DVDs as soon as libdvdcss2 is installed.

External Links