NawaMan's Blog

Playing most media files in Ubuntu is very easy. There is no need to manually search and install codec like on Windows. You play the file and Ubuntu will ask you to click OK to install it. So what you need to do are just few clicks and entering the admin password. (It is the license problem that prevents this process from being completely automatic. Still you don’t need to go look for the codec. One of the codec, however, is not included in the above process.) The one is Real Media (*.rm, *.rv, *.ram and *.rmvb). To install real media codex in Ubuntu (for 8.04 and 8.10), you need to download the codec yourself and this is only work with MPlayer.

Because the big part of the installation involve being administrator, I do not want to give the instruction of that part for Graphic User Interface. That because a wrong move (like delete button or wrong drag-&-drop) can ruin your system. All in all, you need to use terminal to complete it.

1. Install necessary package and the codec
   1. Open Terminal
      Open Terminal and copy the following code (every line) and paste on the terminal
      Paste in Terminal (you can also paste “Shift+Insert”).

      # Install MPlayer
      sudo apt-get install mplayer libstdc++5
      
      # Extract the codec
      # NOTE that you can find other version of the codec here
      # The one using here is the lastest (yes the latest) and for Ubuntu.
      wget http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/essential-20071007.tar.bz2
      tar -jxvf essential-20071007.tar.bz2
      cd essential-20071007
      
      # Move codec to the right place
      sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/win32
      sudo cp * /usr/lib/win32
      sudo ln -s /usr/lib/win32 /usr/lib/codecs
      
      # Remove residue
      cd.. rm -Rf essential-20071007
      # The last line need to be copied too

   2. You will need to enter the password
      Enter the password.
2. Config MPlayer to use the right module and codec
   1. Right click anywhere to start preference dialog
      Open MPlayer’s Preferences Dialog
   2. Ignored the warning
      Ignore the Warning (we will follow the warning later)
   3. Select “RealVideo decoder” and “FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders” for VDO and Audio codec family.
      Select the Ppoper codec
   4. Test by try to open the file with MPlayer.
      Try open with MPlayer
3. Set MPlayer as default program from RealMedia.
   1. In nautilus, click right at the file to open property dialog
      Open Property Dialog
   2. Go to “Open With …” tab and select MPlayer and close the dialog
      Select MPlayer as the default application You can actually use Totem (the default media player of Ubuntu) but the quality is not as good (at least for my setting). That is it Enjoy your VDO.

NOTE: I base my guide heavily on an excellent (but out dated) guide here and I want to give all the credit to the original guide.

NawaMan