Install multimedia codecs, libdvdcss in Debian Etch GNU/Linux

Debian having released the latest stable version of its GNU/Linux distribution, there is obviously a rush by Debian users to upgrade their distro. Debian is considered by its die hard followers to be one of the few GNU/Linux distributions which can stand up to other Unix OSes with regard to security without sacrificing those aspects which make GNU/Linux the most feature rich posix OS in the world.

But once you finish installing Debian, you need to do some housekeeping so as to enable you to play multimedia files which are encoded using proprietary or closed formats such as Microsoft's WMV files or Apple's quick time files.

This can be achieved in a number of ways:

Method I (Easy way)

1. Open the file /etc/apt/sources.list and append the following line :
   

   #FILE /etc/apt/sources.list
   ...
   deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch main
   

2. Update the packages using the command :
   

   # apt-get update
   

   Learn more on the use of apt-get and dpkg.
   


3. Now you can install all the multimedia codecs as well as libdvdcss which is necessary to view DVD movies, using the following command :
   

   # apt-get install w32codecs libdvdcss2
   

Method II (Manual way)

1. Visit the mplayer official website and download the multimedia binary codecs package (this is available in a variety of package formats). Make sure you download the package suited to your architecture and operating system. For example, there are packages for Intel32 and AMD64 architecture apart from those for Windows.


2. Unpack them and copy them into the /usr/lib/codecs directory as follows :
   

   # tar -xvjf essential-20061022.bz2
   # cd essential-20061022
   # cp * /usr/lib/codecs/.
   

   If you do not have a codecs directory, then you have to create it first. Next create a soft link of all the files in the codecs directory to the location /usr/lib/win32/ as follows :
   

   # cd /usr/lib/win32
   # ln -s /usr/lib/codecs/* .
   

   Now you have all the win32 codecs installed on your machine which can be accessed by the media players such as totem to play WMV, Quick time and other proprietary format files.
   


3. To install libdvdcss2 which is a necessary ingredient for playing encrypted DVD movies, download the libdvdcss2 library from its official site and install it on your Debian machine. They provide the binary as a Deb package which makes it really convenient. If you have downloaded it in some other package such as bzip2, then just unpack the contents and copy the two files libdvdcss.so.2 and libdvdcss.so.2.0.8 to the /usr/lib/ directory as follows:
   

   # tar -xvjf libdvdcss-1.2.9.tar.bz2
   # cd libdvdcss-1.2.9/
   # cp libdvdcss.so.2 libdvdcss.so.2.0.8 /usr/lib/.
   

That is all there is to it. Now you can view videos and play music in almost all video and audio file formats. While you are at it, it might also be desirable to download and install mplayer - a versatile audio and video player.

Note: If you still run into trouble playing your favourite audio or video files in any player, you can use the strace tool (installed by default on all Linux distributions) to troubleshoot your problem.