Note, this page is intended for Ubuntu Hoary users who need to have support for non-Free formats and tools (see FreeFormats for the preferred alternatives). Warty users may be able to follow these instructions, but some packages may not work (in particular the ones from hoary-extras won't work).

Disclaimer and Legal Notice

Packages distributed in unofficial repositories are not supported by Ubuntu or Debian. Please don't file bugs caused by the use of third party packages.

Some of the packages listed here may be illegal in your country. Use at your own risk.

Most of the formats listed here have been replaced by FreeFormats and this information is presented here for legacy and migration purposes. Be aware that the usage of non-free programs and formats cannot be supported because of the restrictions that affect them.

Contents

TableOfContents(1)

Anchor(overview)

Anchor(howtoadd)

Required Repositories

Many of the packages on this page are not included in Ubuntu's default repositories. You will need to add Universe, Multiverse, and Hoary-Extras to your list.

• AddingRepositoriesHowto

To use some multimedia codecs/plugins, you will need to use the Hoary-extras repository. To use this, in the Synaptic repositories dialog box, click Add and then Custom. In the dialog box, type in the following APT line:

deb http://ubuntu-backports.mirrormax.net/ hoary-extras main universe multiverse restricted

Click OK and you should be good to go - just reload the package list.

Please note that whenever you install packages from this source, an authentication warning may appear. This just means that the packages are not signed, and can be safely disregarded if you are installing packages from this particular source.

The hoary-extras repository is an unoffical community project. The packages in this repository are not supported by Canonical Ltd. or Ubuntu!!!

Anchor(sound)

Sound and third party software

• SoundProblemsHoary

Java

Sun's implementation of Java and Java plugin for browsers is also non-free. Free Java is in active development and will be the preferred choice in the future also as a browser plugin (currently it is used in some programs like OpenOffice.org). Meanwhile, if you require Java support you have to install Sun's Java, assuming they happen to support your platform.

• ["Java"] (Sun)

MP3, Windows Media, Real Media

Totem-gstreamer, Rhythmbox and other GStreamer players

To play other media formats on Ubuntu's default media players, you need gstreamer plugins. The following are available in [:AddingRepositoriesHowto:Multiverse]. Install them using [:SynapticHowto:Synaptic].

• gstreamer0.8-mad - Play MP3s

• akode-mpeg - Play MP3s in Kubuntu

• gstreamer0.8-ffmpeg - newer MPEG support

• gstreamer0.8-plugins - Various other formats

Totem-xine, Xine, Mplayer, and other Binary Codec players

• libmad0 (multiverse)- MP3 support for non-gstreamer players

Binary codecs for proprietary formats are available in Hoary-Extras

• w32codecs - ATI, Cinepak, DivX, Indeo, Intel 263, Microsoft MPEG-4, Morgan Multimedia Motion JPEG, QuickTime, RealAudio, RealVideo, Windows Media Video... And more.

Totem-gstreamer, installed by default, cannot play Windows Media or Real Media files. If you wish to use w32codecs with Totem, get Totem-xine instead:

• totem-xine - Replaces totem-gstreamer; Totem will now use binary codecs instead of gstreamer

[http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/ Ogg Vorbis] is a flexible and Free lossy audio codec with a proven track record. This format is now supported by some DVD players and some portable music players (usb keys, mp3 players).

MP3 encoding:

• ["CDRipping"]

RealPlayer

An official Real Player is available in Hoary Extras:

• realplayer (hoary-extras)

RealPlayer for PPC

To install RealPlayer on PPC, download the Experimental build installer from [https://player.helixcommunity.org/2004/downloads/ Helix]

make the file executable (chmod 770) and execute (./realplayer-xxxxxx.bin)

Answer the questions and RealPlayer should work by executing /path-to-RealPlayer-directory/realplayer. To make life easier add an alias in your .bashrc (ie alias = '/path-to-Real\\Player-directory/./realplayer&') or create a soft link to /usr/local/bin (sudo ln -s /path-to-RealPlayer-directory/realplayer /usr/local/bin/).

RealPlayer issues

1. If RealPlayer doesn't immediately work, go to the RealPlayer install directory and remove the SWF plugins. For some reason, it works perfectly most of the time after you do this. If you still have problems, it may be the way that your soundcard handles esd. Go on to 2. (Keith Bassett)

2. If you have trouble hearing any sound in RealPlayer, change the auto_spawn item in /etc/esound/esd.conf from its default setting of 0 to 1.

Other Video and Audio Codecs

DVD-video

Currently there is no legal way to play DVD's on Linux using free packages in most countries. The package that enables Linux to play DVDs is libdvdcss2 (Note: there is a "2" at the end). You can download the livdvdcss2 codecs package from one of the unofficial backports mirrors, or search the web with Google.

Other mirror: www.dtek.chalmers.se An installer-script is located in: /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/install-css.sh (works for amd64 too - backports does not)

If your video playback software (e.g. Xine, MPlayer, Totem, etc.) locks up when attempting to access a DVD, you will need to: (1) Install regionset; and (2) Run regionset WITH a DVD in your drive.

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.

Macromedia Flash

Flash for i386

Type the following in a terminal (requires Multiverse):

    apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

This will install the non-free Flash player and the plugins needed to view it in Firefox and Mozilla. If you have problems viewing text in some Flash files, you may need to install the msttcorefonts package, which is also in multiverse.

Note that this package seems to be missing from Multiverse right now. --IainCheyne

Note that this package doesn't exist for the amd64 architecture, as Macromedia has not yet produced a binary.

Flash for x86_64

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 2 free implementations. One is gplflash and the other is swfdec. There's 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 to not work very well and be unstable, so that option is not great. Better to install one of them (I recommend gplflash) manually.

To install gplflash:

Download the latest version of gplflash (at the time of writing it was 0.4.13) from https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=110956.

$ wget -c http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gplflash/gplflash-0.4.13.tar.bz2?download

Sub in the latest version if it is no longer 0.4.13. Decompress the files.

$ tar xvjf gplflash-0.4.13.tar.bz2

Change to the install directory.

$ cd gplflash-0.4.13

Compile the player and plugin.

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --with-plugin-dir=/usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/
$ make
$ sudo make install

Finally add /usr to the path variable so that the player itself will work, not just the plugin.

$ sudo PATH=$PATH:/usr

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 (from HOARY-EXTRAS). 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 encyrpted, and will not just play using gstreamer0.8-faad. You will need to decrypt them first.

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 (install from HOARY-EXTRAS). However, this currently is problematic, and does not produce usable AAC files, though this may change in the future.

For other programs, you may be able to utilize FAAC directly to encode to AACs - just install the "faac" package. You can make iPod-compatible AACs this way, but this requires some additional configuration in your CD ripping utility.

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 is 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 less 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 (from HOARY-EXTRAS) and libmcrypt4 (from UNIVERSE). 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).