audio/video packages for ubuntu

[Steve Pearce]

On 07/12/12 05:22, JD wrote:
> Wouldlike to install several audio/video libraries,
> that provide flac, vorbis, wma, wmv, mpX....etc
> 
> except I do not know the exact package names.
> 
> How does one query the ubuntu repos using wildcards
> as is done with yum on redhat distros:
> yum list available "*flac*"
> 
> andit lists every available package containing the word flaci
> in the "enabled" repos in /etc/yum.repos.d/
> 
> Thanx.
> 
> 
> 

Hi JD

As far as I'm aware you can't use two wildcards in an apt-cache search
on Ubuntu. These are probably the best commands to try:

"apt-cache search "flac"
"apt-cache search -n "flac"

The -n switch will give you tighter results. From the apt-cache man page:
      --names-only, -n
           Only search on the package names, not the long descriptions.
           Configuration Item: APT::Cache::NamesOnly.

Given you're using Ubuntu, you'll be wanting to search for packages that
fit the gstreamer framework. The following commands will show you most
of the packages you're looking for:

sudo apt-get update
apt-cache search -n "gstreamer0.10"

Running "apt-cache show gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg" will give you detailed
information about each package, gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg for example says:

Description-en: FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer
This GStreamer plugin supports a large number of audio and video
compression formats through the use of the FFmpeg library.  The plugin
contains GStreamer elements for decoding 90+ formats (AVI, MPEG, OGG,
Matroska, ASF, ...), demuxing 30+ formats and colorspace conversion.

As I tend to deal with a lot of niche audio formats, I tend to make
sure I have these packages installed in each Ubuntu build I run:

gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse

Hope this info helps!
stevepdp