Install Codec Pack in Linux

Like Windows operating system, most of Linux distribution come with no multimedia codecs, so you'll not be able to play certain multimedia files such as rmvb, mp3, avi, DivX or MOV.

In this post, I'll show you how to install a codec pack into your Linux operating system. First of all, you must download codec pack. You can download a codec pack from softpedia:

w32codec-all description

The most important codec pack for Linux, used by many media players.

w32codec-all-2006 is the most important codec pack for Linux, used by many media players, including Xine and Mplayer.

Most important video codecs:

· MPEG-1 (VCD) and MPEG-2 (SVCD/DVD/DVB) video
· MPEG-4 in all variants including DivX ;-), OpenDivX (DivX4), DivX 5 (Pro), XviD
· Windows Media Video 7/8 (WMV1/2)
· Windows Media Video 9 (WMV3) (using x86 DLL)
· RealVideo 1.0, 2.0 (G2)
· RealVideo 3.0 (RP8), 4.0 (RP9) (using Real libraries)
· Sorenson v1/v3 (SVQ1/SVQ3), Cinepak, RPZA and other QuickTime codecs
· DV video
· 3ivx
· Intel Indeo3 (3.1, 3.2)
· Intel Indeo 4.1 and 5.0 (using x86 DLL or XAnim codecs)
· VIVO 1.0, 2.0, I263 and other H.263(+) variants (using x86 DLL)
· MJPEG, AVID, VCR2, ASV2 and other hardware formats
· FLI/FLC
· HuffYUV
· various old simple RLE-like formats

Most important audio codecs:

· MPEG layer 1, 2, and 3 (MP3) audio
· AC3/A52 (Dolby Digital) audio (software or SP/DIF)
· AAC (MPEG-4 audio)
· WMA (DivX Audio) v1, v2
· WMA 9 (WMAv3), Voxware audio, ACELP.net etc (using x86 DLLs)
· RealAudio: COOK, SIPRO, ATRAC3 (using Real libraries)
· RealAudio: DNET and older codecs
· QuickTime: Qclp, Q-Design QDMC/QDM2, MACE 3/6 (using QT libraries), ALAC
· Ogg Vorbis audio
· VIVO audio (g723, Vivo Siren) (using x86 DLL)
· alaw/ulaw, (ms)gsm, pcm, *adpcm and other simple old audio formats

After your download is compelete, open a console/terminal and do the following command to extract the codec pack

tar xvjf all-20071007.tar.bz2

Because some players have default directory to look codecs you must make sure that these directories:

/usr/lib/codecs/
/usr/local/lib/codecs/
/usr/lib/win32/

If your Linux don't have directories that I mention above, you can create with the following command:

mkdir /usr/lib/codecs/
mkdir /usr/local/lib/codecs/
mkdir /usr/lib/win32/

Now, you need to copy all the codecs to the all directories and change their permissions to 755 with the following command:

cp all-20071007/* /usr/lib/codecs/
cp all-20071007/* /usr/local/lib/codecs/
cp all-20071007/* /usr/lib/win32/
chmod 755 /usr/lib/codecs/*
chmod 755 /usr/local/lib/codecs/*
chmod 755 /usr/lib/win32*

That's all!