Enabling Multimedia Playbacks on Hardy Heron

This simple how to installs the most common restricted codecs in Hardy Heron, so you can play mp3, aac, DVD ,mp4, avi, wmv and many more formats. It also installs the codecs for ripping mp3s using the lame encoder and making DVD/CDs.

Below is the steps:
1. In a terminal type:
$ sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-uglygstreamer0.10-ffmpeg libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdread3

2. In order to play copyrighted DVDs, you need to install the libdvdcss2 package. To do this you need to install the Medibuntu (Multimedia, Entertainment & Distractions In Ubuntu)- a repository of packages that cannot be included into the Ubuntu distribution for legal reasons like copyright, license or patent restrictions. It also includes many popular media .debs for ffmpeg, w32codes, skype and google earth.

2.1 In a terminal type:
$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add this to the end of your source list:
## Medibuntu - Ubuntu 8.04 “hardy”
## Please report any bug on https://bugs.launchpad.net/medibuntu/
deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ hardy free non-free

2.2 Then you have to add the GPG Key to authenticate the packages:
$ wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

2.3 Now update your system to load the Medibuntu repository into your apt-get sources:
$ sudo apt-get update

3. To enable playback of encrypted DVDs, and other mpeg based video files:
$ sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 w32codecs ffmpeg

That’s about it, now you have nearly complete multimedia playback capable Ubuntu 8.04, and the same steps can be applied to any of the variants of this distribution.