Media (DVD, web content, video & audio) playback in Fedora

From:http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=100206

Note: This howto has been transferred to my blog here. (Instructions for Fedora 7+ can be found here)

Hello,
There have been many complaints about media not working in Fedora - MP3s, DVDs, etc. So, I decided to make this guide to help out - By installing a few packages, you can get the codecs for these media or media formats, and solve the problem.

Before we begin, all of these packages require the livna repo to be installed, so let's do that first:

Code:

  
  

   
   
rpm -Uhv http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-VERSION.rpm
  
  

Remember to replace VERSION with your Fedora release version - eg 5, 6, 7, etc.

General Info

I'm going to separate the sections of this howto by program name, but I recommend that you install them all as many compliment or depend on each other. If you know what each does individually, then you can install them but please don't post about things not playing when all programs aren't installed - many provide codecs that will be shared with other programs, allowing them to decode that media, too.

If you want to skip the reading and take the shortcut, installing them all at once, here's the commands:

Code:

  
  

   
   su -
   
   
yum -y remove totem totem-plparser;yum -y install totem-xine totem-xine-plparser rhythmbox mplayerplug-in mplayer mplayer-gui xine-lib-extras-nonfree libdvdcss libdvdread libdvdplay libdvdnav lsdvd libdvbpsi compat-libstdc++-33
  
  

DVD playback
Just a few libraries should do it:

Code:

  
  

   
   
yum -y install libdvdcss libdvdread libdvdplay libdvdnav lsdvd libdvbpsi
  
  

totem-xine
totem-xine is a movie player that is based on xine and not gstreamer, and as a result this will let you view DVDs and more types of media from the same interface that the default Fedora Core's totem package provides.

Code:

  
  

   
   su -
   
   
yum remove totem totem-plparser -y;yum install totem-xine totem-xine-plparser rhythmbox xine-lib-extras-nonfree -y
  
  

mplayer and mplayer-plugin
mplayer is also a movie player, but the graphical interface is harder to use compared to totem-xine, and there is no support for menus in movies at the moment of writing. That is why I find totem-xine superior, but mplayer does have a web media plugin for Mozilla / Firefox and contains tons of coedcs.

Code:

  
  

   
   
su -
   
   
yum -y install mplayer mplayer-gui mplayerplug-in
  
  

w32codecs ** (WMV/WMA playback!) **
Note: This package has been discontinued at ATRPMs but it doesn't seem to make a difference on new systems anyways.
w32codecs is plain and simply an assembled pack of Windows codecs. Here's how to install it:

Code:

   
   

    
    su -
    
    
wget http://dl.atrpms.net/all/w32codec-1.0_20050412-13.at.i386.rpm
    
    
yum install compat-libstdc++-33 -y
    
    
rpm -ihv w32codec-1.0_20050412-13.at.i386.rpm
    
    
rm w32codec-1.0_20050412-13.at.i386.rpm
   
   

gstreamer and gstreamer-plugins ** (MP3 playback!) **
It's always a good idea to install gstreamer, both to enable mp3 playback and also for the various codecs.

Code:

  
  

   
   su -
   
   
yum install gstreamer gstreamer-plugins gstreamer-plugins-good gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly
  
  

Macromedia Flash Player
Just run this:

Code:

  
  

   
   wget http://macromedia.mplug.org/macromedia-i386.repo -O /etc/yum.repos.d/macromedia-i386.repo
   
   
yum install flash-plugin
  
  

Java & Java web plugin
Please see this howto.

RealPlayer
Please click on the "Download RPM Package" link from this page: RealPlayer Linux home
Save that file to your home, and then open up a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type:

Code:

  
  

   
   
cd ~
   
   
su
   
   
rpm -Uhv RealPlayer10GOLD.rpm
   
   
rm RealPlayer10GOLD.rpm -f
   
   
exit
   
   
exit
  
  

RealPlayer should now be installed, along with it's Mozilla helper so you can view media in Firefox.