This guide will explain how to install in Debian all the
media player codecs - which include multimedia codecs & libdvdcss which is necessary to play DVDs in Linux.
Because of licensing restrictions, Debian Linux does not ship with the multimedia codecs necessary to play a variety of audio and video files. Instead, the users themselves have to download all the media player codecs and install it on their Debian Linux machine. Fortunately, Debian uses a fabulous package management system called apt-get which makes the end user's task in installing the codecs all the more easy.
Install Media Player Codecs
You can install multimedia codecs in Debian Linux in 4 easy steps.
Download the multimedia key ring package
from here. It is a deb package which contain the keyring files for the repository you are going to add in Debian.
Logging in as root, install the keyring package as follows :
# dpkg -i debian-multimedia-keyring_2008.10.16_all.deb
Again as super user (root), open the file
/etc/apt/sources.list in your favourite text editor.
Append the following line (shown in blue) to this file.
#FILE /etc/apt/sources.list
...
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org stable main
It is assumed that you are running stable version of Debian. If you are running testing,unstable or experimental version of Debian Linux, replace the word "
stable" in the line with
testing,
sid, or
experimental respectively.
Update the package database using the
apt-get command as follows:
# apt-get update
Install all the media player codecs as well as libdvdcss which is necessary to view DVD movies running the following command :
# apt-get install w32codecs libdvdcss2
After apt-get has finished installing the packages, try playing a movie or music. Chances are Debian Linux will play any and all media player files with ease.
VLC media player - A universal media player which plays video and audio files of any known format has reached the version 1.0 milestone. I especially have a liking for this media player because it is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, BeOS and BSDs. And, in my experience, I never ever had to hunt for media codecs once I installed VLC on my machine. Heck, it even plays Flash (.flv) video files.
