Multimedia components and proprietary programs

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That's Entertainment

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Movies, music, and Internet telephony are easy to use in Ubuntu. You just have to load the right software packages onto the computer. We present some favorite multimedia apps.

Playing movies and music, ripping DVDs, and making Skype calls is all possible with Ubuntu. Although the Ubuntu installer already provides basic "third-party" multimedia codecs, these options might not fulfill everyone's wishes. At the least, the distribution loads the legitimate MP3 codecs from Fluendo onto the computer through the ubuntu-restricted-addons package, along with components for the GStreamer framework (plugins-ugly, plugins-bad, ffmpeg) and a Flash plugin installer from Adobe.

As a result, you can play MP3 files, burn audio CDs, and view more than 90 movie formats immediately after installation. However, the installed package is not compliant with the ubuntu-restricted-extras package that you should install after the installation. It provides additional codecs for GStreamer, some typical Microsoft fonts (that require an end-user license agreement first), and the UnRAR unpacker. You'll also need to install the LAME library so you can create and play MP3 files from audio CDs.

GStreamer

Generally, a number of programs in Ubuntu play music and movies, but some of the applications are standard. Rhythmbox (Figure 1) is the preinstalled solution for playing music. You can use the software to convert CDs to MP3 format, although RipperX [1] is much better suited for it. Totem, on the other hand, is the default video player. This very simple player uses the GStreamer format. The drop-down menu used to access the videos and podcasts from YouTube and the BBC in the past is missing in the current version (Figure 2). Many users, however, still also install VLC: This multimedia player plays everything, provides more features than Totem, and can be extended easily through modules. You can find these modules in Software Center if you enter "vlc-plugin-" in the search box.

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