Playing DVD and Multimedia Files In Debian GNU/Linux

Source : http://www.pctech101.com/debian_multimedia.php

Our good customer and friend Steven Demetrius has been kind enough to submit this well written article for our visitors who use Debian to benefit from. 

This howto applies to playing DVD non-encrypted and encrypted movies and multi-media files on Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 code name Etch currently Testing distribution as of 2007-02-07. This howto can also be applied to other versions of Debian and Linux distribution with minor changes. You will need a running X window session to run the media player mplayer. KDE or GNOME desktop is suggested. 

Please note that there are other multimedia players other than mplayer. Mplayer just happened to be the one I used. If you use another media player you may need to change its setting so that it can access and use the codecs.

 

Package repository
******************

Please note that these packages are not part of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution and may have different licences from Debian GNU/Linux and/or usability issues in some countires. Please see the package documentation or website for more information.

Packages needed can be downloaded from Christian Marillat Debian Multimedia repository

http://www.debian-multimedia.org/

You can add one of the debian-multimedia mirrors to your Apt sources.list file (as root user). for example

deb http://debian.lcx.at/ testing main

After adding the above mirror to your sources.list (as root user) do an apt-get update to update your apt database.

apt-get update

Packages
********

mplayer - The Ultimate Movie Player For Linux

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPlayer

MPlayer is known to support a wide variety of media formats as distributed. However not all. In order to have mplayer support other media formats additional codecs such as libdvdcss2 and w32codec have to be installed.
To install mplayer issue the following command (as root user) in a shell.

apt-get install mplayer

Once installed run mplayer either from the applications menu or via the shell. If you have problems with mplayer's video you can try to use a different video driver in mplayer's Preferences|Video|Available drivers settings. For my system I had to change the drive to "xv X11/Xv" driver.

w32codecs - win32 binary codecs for popular proprietary formats not
natively supported by mplayer.

ATI VCR-2 video codec.
Cinepak video codec
DivX ;-) video codec, ver. 3.11
DivX ;-) video codec, ver. 4.x
Indeo Video 3.2/4.1/5.0/4.1 quick/5.0 quick codecs.
Intel 263 video codec.
Microsoft MPEG-4 video codec, beta version 3.0.0.2700
Morgan Multimedia Motion JPEG video codec.
QuickTime
RealAudio
RealVideo 8
RealVideo 9
Windows Media Video 9

And more...

To install w32codecs issue the following command (as root user) in a shell.

apt-get install w32codecs

Nothing more needs to be done. Mplayer will have access to these codecs and use them as needed.

libdvdcss2 - Simple foundation for reading DVDs - runtime libraries
To allow applications to access some of the more advanced features
of the DVD format.

To install libdvdcss2 issue the following command (as root user) in a shell.

apt-get install libdvdcss2

Nothing more needs to be done. Mplayer will have access to these codecs and use them as needed.

Now if you want to play a DVD or multimedia file just load it in mplayer and enjoy. You can also play multimedia files over the Internet. Just navigate to the file, click on it and mplayer will begin buffering it in the browser.

References
**********

http://wiki.debian.org/MultimediaCodecs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPlayer
http://www.debian-multimedia.org/

Some information in this document were copied from the respective package documentation.

Copyright (c) 2007 Steven Demetrius.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is available at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.