Codecs on Medibuntu.com?

[Ryan Steele]

On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 4:10 AM, alfred <alfred.s at nexicom.net> wrote:
> Hi All:

Hi Alfred!

> I downloaded some E seminars which turned out to be formatted in Mpeg 4
> AAC. I could see the video, but there was no sound. I remembered that
> Medibuntu had some codecs for this format, so I went to the Ubuntu Info
> Page https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu It gave details on how
> to download files from Medibuntu, which I had forgotten, it was a few
> versions ago, last time I used it.
>
> Then I added the repository for Ubuntu 9.04, as per the line of Code
> for it in the Ubuntu Official Page for Medibuntu.
>
> I downloaded a few package files. Real Player was one of them, and a
> Package file for Mpeg 4 AAC Sound. Then went to use Gdebi to get all
> the Dependencies, that were needed for each Package file from
> Medibuntu. An error came up and said that the Package list was broken,
> and that this was a major error. I checked into what sort of error it
> was, and the >>>sudo wget
> http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/jaunty.list
> --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list<<< was an html
> file of 1.6 Kb, that could not be read. This got put into a folder at
> the beginning of the sources.list, the rest of the list of sources is
> still there, but because of this error it does not get read.

I'm a bit confused here. When you said you added the Medibuntu
repository, what did you do exactly? The instructions state that you
need to run the "sudo wget
http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/jaunty.list
--output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list" command from
the terminal. This just downloads a file into your
/etc/apt/sources.list.d directory. The sources.list file should not
have been changed.

> I'm thinking that if I remove the folder, after removing the added
> repository from Medibuntu, then that might fix the problem, because as
> it stands, no package manager is able to work now, and the sources.list
> can not be upgraded either.

There should be no need to remove a directory. If
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list didn't download correctly, just
delete this file and that should fix the package list problem. If
you've made any changes to sources.list, change it back.

In fact, there shouldn't be any need to use the Medibuntu repository
any more. You can install the codecs to play most files by following
the instructions here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

> Little movies from my Cellphone also have
> the problem of not being able to produce sound, I can see the video,
> but no sound. Quicktime is supposed to make it work, but I never got it
> to work yet.
>
> Is this the right way to go about it, or is there, a need to do this in
> an other way.

An open-source implementation of the AMR codec (commonly used by
cellphones) is in development, but Ubuntu doesn't have it yet. The
best way to play these right now as far as I know is to use a recent
version of MPlayer. I also recommend the SMPlayer frontend which makes
MPlayer (a command line application) a lot easier to use.

Run the following commands in a terminal window to add the GPG keys
for rvm's SMPlayer and MPlayer PPA repositories:

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com E4A4F4F4
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 03E02400

Next, go to System > Administration > Software Sources > Third-Party
Software and add each of these repositories, one at a time:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/smplayer/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/smplayer/ubuntu jaunty main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/mplayer/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/mplayer/ubuntu jaunty main

Finally, go back to the terminal window and do an update/upgrade/install:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install smplayer

Now you should be able to run SMPlayer from the Applications > Sound
and Video menu.

-- 
Ryan Steele - rgsteele at gmail.com