HOWTO: Ubuntu Multimedia

[emperor]

Mozplugger looks like an easy (no compiling) way to go. It's in the "universe" too, so you can install it using Synaptic!

[emperor]

I tried both mozplugger and the vlc plugin and neither gave me the seemless multimedia experience I wanted. For example, Media Player did not work! But after building and installing mplayerplug-in, everything works perfectly, even Yahoo! Yahoo's multimeda search found all 3: Quicktime, Media Player 9, and RealPlayer10.

So, it is worth your time to install the dependent packages, configure, make and install mplayerplug-in! I think even a newbie can do this, just give it a try!

Basicly all I have done below is fill in a few holes and adapted the information at the link below for the Ubuntu distro. The reference link is: http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/install.php

How to buiild and install mplayeplug-in:
=========================
1. Install the following using apt-get via xterm session (sudo apt-get install pkg) or using Synaptic gui. I use the GUI when I can. I happen to like Synaptic! These packages should all be in Ubuntu's main respository.

libgtk2.0-dev
libgtk2.0-dbg (may be optional!)

2. Download gecko-sdk: (for x86 on linux you want this one!)
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o...gnu-1.6.tar.gz

3. Unpack gecko-sdk in your home "work" directory, I use "~/download"
tar -xzvf gecko-sdk-i686-pc-linux-gnu-1.6.tar.gz

4. Now download the mplayer-plugin from here:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/m...ar.gz?download

5. Unpack the source for mplayerplug-in in your "home" work directory:
tar -xzvf mplayerplug-in-2.70.tar.gz

6. Change to your mplayerplug-in directory, for example:
cd mplayerplug-in (in my case, this is: "~/download/mplayerplug-in"

7. Execute "configure" with the following commandline option: (substitute your user account name in "username" )
./configure --with-gecko-sdk=/home/"username"/download/gecko-sdk

8. Next compile and link together the mplayerplug-in by running make with "no" options!
make

9. Finally, install the component and plugin:
For mozilla:
sudo cp mplayerplug-in.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
sudo cp mplayerplug-in.xpt /usr/lib/mozilla/components

For firefox:
sudo cp mplayerplug-in.so /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins
sudo cp mplayerplug-in.xpt /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/components

Notes:(a) I also found I had to set Mplayer's Video driver to X11 (Preferences - Video - X11) or Firefox/Mizilla would crash after playing a movie.

[Julle]

Just little correction. You need EITHER mozilla-dev OR gecko-sdk not both of them. So you can skip phase one of emperors instructions. And naturally you can delete the gecko-sdk and mplayerplug-in folders once you have succesfully installed the plug-in.

Then one question. Does the plug-in work correctly with you ppl? After the first test that I did I notised that for some reason there isn't any controls in my mplayerplug-in. So I can't pause the video or move it backwards or forwards. Any ideas?

[emperor]

Removed "mozilla-dev" from instructions. Thanks Julie!

[Julle]

It seems that libgtk2.0-dev was the thing I was missing. Or libgtk2.0-dbg don't know because I didn't take any changes.

My turn to say thanks.

[Perfect Storm]

Works perfect, emperor!

[natefish]

Didn't need the libgtk2.0-dbg package, used gecko-sdk, and didn't need to set preferences for X11 on my set up. Seems to be working perfect. Much better user experience then the mozplugger.

Thanks for the great directions.

[chapterthree]

Thanks for this guide!

As far as the mplayer install, the following wget isn't working, it's giving me "failed: Connection timed out"

 $ wget http://ftp3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/MPlayer-1.0pre5.tar.bz2

Are there updated links for this?

[Rancoras]

I had the same thing, it appears that their "ftp3" server may be down. Just go to the mplayer web site and try another mirror.

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html

[gamehack]

Hello all,

after adding the marillat repository and trying to install mplayer it gave me this:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  mplayer-586: Depends: libartsc0 (>= 1.3.0) but it is not going to be installed               Depends: libggi2 (>= 1:2.0.5) but it is not going to be installed               Depends: libungif4g (>= 4.1.3) but 4.1.0b1-6 is to be installed
E: Broken packages

I think it's a big mistake for Ubuntu not to include mplayer in their repository. Come on, that's the best player for Linux and it's even in the repository... I like ubuntu very much but this annoys me. If there's some special package for Ubuntu for mplayer, can someone give me some links. Or some other way of installing it, but not by source. I hate whis brute force installing, although I can do it, it's not the preferred way.

Thanks