Disclaimer and Legal Notice

attachment:IconsPage/IconDialog-Warning1.png Patent and license restrictions on media formats complicate a free operating system's ability to distribute software that will support those formats. Ubuntu actively supports the FreeFormats. This page will walk you through getting support for the most popular non-free media formats.

Some of the packages listed here may be illegal in your country. This page is not legal advice.

Before You Start

• You must have administration privileges to install packages. RootSudo explains how Ubuntu provides the necessary privileges.

• Nearly all the applications and packages mentioned on this page are found in the Universe and Multiverse repositories. See AddingRepositoriesHowto for instructions on enabling the Universe and Multiverse repositories.

• Some additional packages are found in repositories not controlled by Ubuntu. Please do not file bugs about these specific packages.

Media Players

Media Players provided by Ubuntu

• Ubuntu supports Totem (a movie player) and Rhythmbox (a music player); Kubuntu includes Kaffeine and Amarok. These applications play free formats (ogg vorbis, ogg theora, and the like) 'out of the box'. However, they can also play most non-free media formats if you install some additional packages. MultimediaApplications describes the most popular media players provided in Ubuntu, as well as some of the most popular available in the repositories.

Non-Free Media

MP3s

• If you live in a country where it is legal, you can enable MP3 playback in the Ubuntu and Kubuntu media players by [:AddingRepositoriesHowto: enabling the universe repository] and installing the gstreamer0.8-mad package. Use your favorite package manager to install the package or type in a terminal:

    sudo apt-get install  gstreamer0.8-mad

or, if you are using Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake):

•   sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly

note for KDE users: Your specific configuration may require you to install the akode-mpeg package to enable mp3 playback. In 6.06, amarok needs libxine-extracodecs for mp3 support.

• If your portable music player does not support FreeFormats, the page [:CDRipping] explains how to convert your CDs to MP3 and AAC.

Other Non-Free Formats

• The Ubuntu and Kubuntu media players can support a wide variety of non-free formats. If it is legal for you to play these formats, just [:AddingRepositoriesHowto: enable the universe and multiverse repositories] and install the necessary packages with your favorite package manager. Alternatively, you can type in a terminal:

    sudo apt-get install  gstreamer0.8-plugins  gstreamer0.8-plugins-multiverse  gstreamer0.8-ffmpeg

or, if you are using Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake):

•   sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
    sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-gl
    sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-base
    sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
    sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
    sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse
    sudo apt-get install libxine-extracodecs
    sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
    sudo apt-get install lame
    sudo apt-get install faad
    sudo apt-get install sox
    sudo apt-get install mjpegtools
    sudo apt-get install libxine-main1

The Codecs

• mplayer, xine and totem-xine can play MPEG-1, -2 & -4, DivX, Quicktime, Real Media 8 & 9, Windows Media Video 9, and many other formats with the proper support. This support has been bundled into the w32codecs package.

  As Windows is generally still in 32 bit land on the desktop, virtually no proprietary codecs are available in 64 bit DLL form, so there is no 'w64codecs' packages. Some people on AMD64 solve this problem by installing a 32-bit version of the operating system inside a chroot (such as via [:VServer:Linux Vserver] or [http://packages.ubuntu.com/breezy/admin/dchroot dchroot]), and this works very well. PowerPC users are generally out of luck entirely on this front - no-one has yet volunteered to collect binary codecs written for commercial operating systems on those platforms, nor to integrate the ability to use them via any of the above media players.

  If your country's laws allow you to play media using the w32codecs, in a terminal, type:

    wget -c ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/pool/main/w/w32codecs/w32codecs_20050412-0.0_i386.deb
    sudo dpkg -i w32codecs_20050412-0.0_i386.deb

Note: wmv files encoded with DRM (Digital Rights Management) are not playable by the codecs.

Note: If you are experiencing choppy audio when playing WMV files, try [http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=136306&postcount=2 this] fix.

Playing Streaming Video from the Internet

• There are a variety of applications that can play streaming video. One of the more popular is mozilla-mplayer, which is available in the multiverse repository. Or you just "import" totem into your browser. You should install the w32codecs (see above), [:AddingRepositoriesHowto: enable the multiverse repository] and, in a terminal, type:

    sudo apt-get install mozilla-mplayer

• already tested on Dapper

    sudo apt-get install kaffeine-mozilla

    sudo apt-get install totem-gstreamer-firefox-plugin

Playing DVD's

• Most commercial DVDs are encrypted with CSS (the Content Scrambling System). The movie players provided in Ubuntu are capable of reading DVDs that are not encrypted. If it is legal for you to circumvent CSS, then you can enable reading encrypted DVDs in vlc, mplayer, xine and totem-xine by installing libdvdcss2. Type in a terminal:

    sudo apt-get install libdvdread3
    sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/install-css.sh

Note: With Ubuntu 6.04 (Dapper Drake), the gstreamer dvd plugin has not been ported to the new version of gstreamer, 0.10. Please use the xine backend.

DVD Lockup

• If your movie player locks up when attempting to access a DVD, you will need to place a DVD movie in your DVD drive, then do the following:

    sudo apt-get install regionset
    regionset

  Alternatively, you can do this without a DVD in your drive if you know your region number. Be warned the software claims you can only change regions 4 times, so that the effects of this procedure are irreversible and may render your drive permanently unable to read DVDs encoded for a particular region.

Jerky Playback

• If DVD playback is jerky or you notice optical data transfer (i.e burning a CD/DVD) is slower than it should be, then you need to enable DMA transfer for that drive. See the ["DMA"] page for details.

RealPlayer

• To install RealPlayer 10, use your browser to download the package [ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/pool/main/r/realplay/realplayer_10.0.6-0.0_i386.deb realplayer_10.0.6-0.0_i386.deb] to your Desktop, and install it (along with a support package needed by RealPlayer) by typing in a terminal:

    cd ~/Desktop
    sudo apt-get install libstdc++5
    sudo dpkg -i realplayer_10.0.6-0.0_i386.deb

  See RealplayerInstallationMethods for other ways to install RealPlayer.

  Most of Real's non-free media formats can also be played by mplayer, xine, and totem-xine when the w32codecs are installed.

Smil

• Use the File Manager to navigate to a folder containing a Smil file. Click the file with the right mouse button, select Properties, and then the tab Open With. Click the radio button next to RealPlayer 10, and close the dialog window.

RealMedia

• If you want RealPlayer to be the default application to open RealMedia files, use the File Manager to navigate to a folder containing a RealMedia file. Click the file with the right mouse button, select Properties, and then the tab Open With. Click the radio button next to RealPlayer 10, and close the dialog window.

Macromedia Flash

• Macromedia's Flash Player is only available for i386 based machines, and Shock Wave is not available at all. There are projects that are attempting to provide free support for Flash, and currently they are the only way to get Flash support for the PPC and AMD64 distributions of Ubuntu.

  Flash can be problematic, so if you have problems (and solutions), read Flash Issues below.

Flash for i386

• To add Flash Player support for konqueror, mozilla, firefox, epiphany and other browsers, [:AddingRepositoriesHowto:enable the multiverse repository] and, in a terminal, type:

for Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake)

•   sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
    sudo update-flashplugin

Note: With Ubuntu 6.04 (Dapper Drake Flight 5), apt-get does not seem to activate flashplugin, so you will have to use the update-flashplugin to allow Mozilla Firefox to use it.

for Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

•   sudo apt-get install flashplayer-mozilla

for Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog)

•   sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Flash for AMD64 and PPC

• "For those of us with 64-bit processors (or Mac) there is no non-free flash implementation available because the manufacturer does not support them. However, there are two free implementations. One is gplflash and the other is swfdec. There is also gplflash2 in development that aims to be the proper free, open source replacement for all the platforms. While you can install them using apt-get, they tend not to work very well and are unstable, so that option is not great. Better to install one of them (I recommend gplflash) manually." If you are determined, another option is to install a i386 ubuntu in a DebootstrapChroot and launch your browser with flash plugin from there.

gplflash from Ubuntu

• To install gplflash, [:AddingRepositoriesHowto:enable the universe repository] and, in a terminal, type:

    sudo apt-get install libflash-mozplugin

Compiling gplflash

• Since the gplflash in Ubuntu can be unstable, a better method is to compile it from source. To do this, first install some needed support packages by typing:

    sudo apt-get install libx11-dev xlibs-dev libmad0-dev libjpeg-dev checkinstall build-essential

  Then, get the gplflash source and compile and install it by typing :

    wget -c http://mirror.optusnet.com.au/sourceforge/g/gp/gplflash/gplflash-0.4.13.tar.bz2
    tar xvjf gplflash-0.4.13.tar.bz2
    cd gplflash-0.4.13
    ./configure --with-plugin-dir=/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
    make
    sudo checkinstall

  When you restart your web browser you should have a working, stable flash plugin.

Flash Issues

Sound

Symptoms

• Flash videos stop playing after 1 second.
• Firefox freezes when going to another page ater having tried to view a flash video.
• The firefox process not correctly ending after having tried to view a flash video.

Possible Fixes

• After Flash is installed, if the sound is not working properly, or you experience one of the above symptoms, try one of the following solutions: Open:

    gedit ~/.mozilla/firefox/rc

  Add the line:

    FIREFOX_DSP="none"

  As an alternative solution, if the above doesn't solve the problem: Type the following in a terminal:

    sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libesd.so.0 /usr/lib/libesd.so.1

Video

• If you use an Intel 855GM video card, ensure you set the X server colour depth to 24 bits, otherwise you will probably experience Firefox crashes.

  You may need to install the gsfonts-x11 package for flash to properly display fonts.

AAC and iTunes Music Store

AAC decoding

• The default audio format used by Apple's iTunes and iPod is AAC. This is a variant of the MPEG standard, and as such has patent issues. However, you can listen to AAC files in rhythmbox or amarok by installing gstreamer0.8-faad. You will need this for listening to any AAC file, including those bought from the iTunes Music Store (see below for more info on using the music store on Linux). Warning: songs purchased from the iTunes music store (.m4p) are encrypted and will not just play using gstreamer0.8-faad. You will need to decrypt them first.

For Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake):

• Install the gstreamer-plugins-bad-multiverse package.

  •    sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse

AAC encoding:

• FAAC can be used to encode AACs, although this is somewhat experimental compared to MP3 encoding at this point. For encoding programs which use gstreamer, there is a gstreamer plugin called gstreamer0.8-faac. See CDRipping for how to encode CDs to AAC. For other programs, you may be able to utilize FAAC directly to encode to AACs using the "faac" package.

iTunes Music Store

• Apple's iTunes Music Store sells music online with a large selection of artists. Songs are in 128K AAC format, and cost varies by country. Apple only has Mac and Windows clients, but it also can be used on Linux. There are two different methods by which this can be done.

  First of all, you can use CodeWeavers CrossOver Office (available at http://www.codeweavers.com) to install the Windows version of iTunes on Ubuntu. This will allow you to buy iTunes songs on Linux and listen to them. However, the main caveats of this approach are that 1) it costs money 2) it is not a fully Linux-native solution.

  As an alternative to using CrossOver, there is a new, Free program called PyMusique which allows basic usage of the iTunes Music Store on Linux. This works better than using iTunes on CrossOver, but PyMusique has fewer features than the official iTunes client at this point and may be in violation of the iTunes Music Store terms of service. To use this on Ubuntu, first install gstreamer0.8-faad and libmcrypt4. Then, go to http://fuware.nanocrew.net/pymusique/ or a mirror (google "pymusique 0.4" for mirrors) and download the pymusique, python2.4-mcrypt, python2.4-vlc, and python2.4-mp4ff packages. Finally, install all the packages you downloaded from the above website. You can now launch PyMusique from the Applications-Internet menu, and purchase songs (although you may have to restart your system for this to work).

  PyMusique has been superceded by SharpMusique, available from http://www.nanocrew.net/software/sharpmusique/. It is available as a .deb for Breezy Badger and allows you to preview songs, signup for an account, buy songs and albums, redownload songs that you bought, and more.

Getting Java

Blackdown Java

For Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger), the easiest method is to use the Blackdown Java 1.4 installer from Multiverse. To install Java with the installer, just do:

  sudo apt-get install j2re1.4

Ubuntu PPC, please see: ["JavaPPC"]. Ubuntu AMD64, please see: ["JavaAMD64"].

Sun Java

The alternative method it to get the latest version from Sun. This version of Java works better for most applications. Sun's implementation of Java and Java plugin for browsers however is non-free. Free Java is in active development and will be the preferred choice once it is released.

Go to http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp and click on “Download JRE 5.0 Update 6”. Ensure you do not choose one of the JDK or J2EE versions unless you are going to develop Java applications.

You must first accept the licence, then click on “Linux self-extracting file” (jre-1_5_0_06-linux-i586.bin). Save this file to your hard drive.

Make the downloaded file executable. At the command line, change to the directory where you downloaded the file, and type

  chmod +x jre-1_5_0_06-linux-i586.bin

Install the java-package and java-common, as well as fakeroot (which allows a non-root user to create the package derived from Sun's bin file):

  sudo apt-get install fakeroot java-package java-common

If you get an error when installing java-package, you need to enable the multiverse repository (see ["AddingRepositoriesHowto"]).

Use make-jpkg to translate Sun's bin file into a debian package:

  fakeroot make-jpkg jre-1_5_0_06-linux-i586.bin

Note: You can see warning mesages like the ones below, but there is nothing to worry about.

  mkdir: cannot create directory `/etc/.java': Permission denied
  ./jdk-1_5_0_06-linux-i586.bin: line 507: /usr/share/mime-info/java-archive.keys: Permission denied

Note: If you get an error similar to this:

  Loading plugins: blackdown-j2re.sh blackdown-j2sdk.sh common.sh ibm-j2re.sh ibm-j2sdk.sh j2re.sh j2sdk.sh j2se.sh sun-j2re.sh sun-j2sdk.sh

  No matching plugin was found.

Try:

  DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE=i386-linux fakeroot make-jpkg jre-1_5_0_06-linux-i586.bin

or similar command if you are not using i386 architecture.

Install the created package using dpkg:

  sudo dpkg -i sun-j2re1.5_1.5.0+update06_i386.deb

Note: in above example, i386 might have to be i586.

Sun Java SDK (Software Development Kit)

The same procedure can also be used to install Sun's Java SDK instead of just the runtime environment (JRE). Just choose "Download JDK 5.0 Update 6" when downloading the package from Sun, and replace the file name with jdk-1_5_0_06-linux-i586.bin

Selecting the default Java version

In Ubuntu 5.10, if you want to use Sun Java instead of the open source GIJ you need to set it as default. Run:

  sudo update-alternatives --config java

and select your preference from the list.

Note: To get common java applications (installed using .deb-packages) to run under your JVM of choice, make sure you also edit /etc/jvm accordingly. Packages such as ant uses this file to determine which JVM to start.

Java on Mozilla Firefox

Installing Java without following the previous steps does not alert Firefox to its presence. If you simply executed the .bin file you downloaded, you will need to tell Firefox or Mozilla where to find the plugin library:

If you do not have a .mozilla/plugins directory in your home directory, create one.

  mkdir -p /home/username/.mozilla/plugins

Then create links to plugin files.

  cd /home/username/.mozilla/plugins
  ln -s /usr/lib/j2re1.5-sun/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin_oji.so
  sudo ln -s /usr/lib/j2re1.5-sun/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/

You can skip these steps if you used the make-jpkg command.

If you have downloaded more than one, you need to modify the command to be more specific.

Java on amd64 computers

Unfortunately, Sun's Java for 64-bit PC's does't work very well yet, but the Blackdown version of Java works and is available in the Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) Multiverse repository.

  sudo apt-get install j2re1.4 j2re1.4-mozilla-plugin

Afterwards restart Firefox and you should have a working Java plugin.

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