Comprehensive Multimedia & Video Howto

[BLTicklemonster]

P.S. Sorry,just noticed you've been using Ubuntu quite a while and my reply is very newbie-friendly. Saying that, new users could be reading this exchange anyway.

which is how all replies should be regardless.

thank you!

[ubuntu-freak]

which is how all replies should be regardless.

thank you!

Thanks, you're right. I remember wondering (for a couple of hours) where I was supposed to execute commands when I first started using Ubuntu, which seems hard to believe now.

[unseend]

thanx man! great How-to!

[HappyHenry]

So wonderful!!! I am trying to get past the "windows" mentality and following your tutorial, with all the command line entries, was ground breaking. I already see the great value in the command line. I think its actually easier than searching all over the gui for the right menu, then drop down ... Just enter the command and WOOSH done! Thank you for all your work on this. All of it was helpful and I never felt unsure of any of the steps. Your explinations are, "the stuff noobs dream of!" Now i wish you would write a linux primer book, because none of the five i bought so far are as clear, and pertinant as your post! Really great!

[ubuntu-freak]

Thanks for your comments people.

I knew that most "newbies" would be fine with a CLI-based how-to, as it's fast and just a case of cutting and pasting commands.

[sofasurfer]

When I added the medibuntu repository I ran a command that put the link o the repository in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d file. But then I am told that if I was not able to accomplish that task I would have to do it manually, and I would put the information in the /etc/apt/sources.list.

What is the differance between the /sources.list.d and /etc/sources.list files.

[hbostrom]

Hi,

First, thanks for an excellent guide! Everything works great for me except the Quicktime problem reported by others. I run Ubuntu 8.04, Firefox 3, and I followed your guide to the letter and thus have the Gecko Media Player plugin for Quicktime installed. However, on the Apple movie trailer site I can't launch the lowres streams, and instead I get a message to "Get the latest Quicktime".

As you mention above, the HD streams work by launching an external instance of the Gecko Media Player. Lower resolution versions seem to instead try to embed the movie in the web page, could this have anything to do with the problem? Do we need an update to the Gecko plugin, or what's going on?

I'm having the same issue...anyone have a fix for this?

I am having this very same issue. I've followed Nathan's how-to to the letter.

Hi reassuringlyoffensive,

I would really appreciate if you have any comments regarding this issue reported by me and others!

[ubuntu-freak]

UPDATE: There may be problems with the second method now (too many Intrepid packages being installed), so try the first method and leave some feedback as to how sucessful it was.

First Method: Navigate to Places > Home, then in the file browser menu navigate to View > Show Hidden Files and tick that option. Within your home directory, navigate to .mozilla > firefox > ??????.default and find the file named "pluginreg.dat". Right-click on that file and then choose to open it with a text editor. Alternatively, you could open the terminal and enter a command like the following:

gedit ~/.mozilla/firefox/??????.default/plugingreg.dat

Note: Make sure you replace "??????.default" with the exact name of that folder.

Once you have opened that file with a text editor, search for "QuickTime Plug-in 6.0 / 7:$", then copy and paste "QuickTime Plug-in 7.0 / 7:$" directly above it, but without the quotation marks of course. Close and save, then restart Firefox.

Second Method: Open the terminal, then copy and paste the following command into it:

gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Change every instance of "hardy" to "intrepid", close and save. Next, open the terminal and execute the following command:

sudo apt-get update

Note: DO NOT let Update Manager upgrade your system during this process, as you will be upgraded to a pre-release and buggy version of Ubuntu.

Purge the old and install the new by executing this command:

sudo apt-get purge gnome-mplayer gecko-mediaplayer && sudo apt-get install gnome-mplayer gecko-mediaplayer

Finally, so that you can safely upgrade your system, open up your sources.list file again and change all the instances of "intrepid" back to "hardy":

gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Close and save, then complete the process by updating your list of packages once more:

sudo apt-get update

Restart Firefox.

Enjoy!

[ubuntu-freak]

When I added the medibuntu repository I ran a command that put the link o the repository in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d file. But then I am told that if I was not able to accomplish that task I would have to do it manually, and I would put the information in the /etc/apt/sources.list.

What is the differance between the /sources.list.d and /etc/sources.list files.

/sources.list.d is a directory and /sources.list is a file. They introduced the directory to keep Medibuntu separate from the main sources.list, but it's not very important, so don't worry about it.

[keiichidono]

Thank you so much for this guide, it helped me install Flash 10 to fix the flash problems i had and helped me set up Mplayer Plugin.