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Archives For November 30, 1999

One Command to Install MultiMedia Codecs in Ubuntu 19.10

Last updated: October 2, 2019

Ubuntu 18.04

Due to legal reason, Ubuntu does not have multimedia codec installed out of the box, though they are available in the universe repositories.

When you’re going to play music or video via the default media players (Rhythmbox and Totem), it prompts to install the decoder:

And Ubuntu Software pops up with a list of software packages after clicked the button.

For those don’t want to be interrupted again, or you don’t know which to install, simple run following single command in terminal.

1.) Open terminal either via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching for ‘terminal’ from application menu. When it opens, run command:

sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Type user password for sudo prompts and hit Enter. Run sudo apt update first if required

The command will install gstreamer, ffmpeg, dvd reading and navigation libraries, mesa and intel video acceleration drivers, and other most required software libraries.

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Quick Tip: How to Install Media Codecs in Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Idri

Last updated: September 22, 2021

Due to legal reasons, Ubuntu does NOT include multi-media codecs out-of-the-box for audio and video playback. It’s however easy to install them via a single command.

During the Ubuntu installing process, it provides an option “Install third party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media formats” in the wizard. If you didn’t enable it, Ubuntu refuses to play movie and sound via the default Totem media player and Rhythmbox music player.

Without installing third-party player with bundled codecs, you can simply install the ubuntu-restricted-extras package to fix the issue. The package does not contain anything, but tells to install the following packages for you:

  • ttf-mscorefonts-installer – Install Microsoft TrueType core fonts.
  • unrar – non-free package enables ability to extract rar package in Ubuntu.
  • libavcodec-extra – FFmpeg library with encoder / decoder for audio and video codecs.
  • chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra – FFmpeg codecs for Chromium based web browser.
  • And a few gstreamer1.0 plugins for audio / video playback, recording and editing.

How to Install Media Codecs in Ubuntu:

Firstly, open a terminal window either by searching from the ‘Activities‘ overview screen or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard.

When terminal opens, copy and paste the command below into it and hit Enter:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Type your password (no visual feedback for security reason) when it prompts and hit Enter

For Ubuntu flavors, e.g, KUbuntu, and LUbuntu, there are relevant package to install the commonly used media codecs and fonts.

For KUbuntu users, open terminal emulator from start menu and run the command below instead:

sudo apt update && sudo install kubuntu-restricted-extras

And for LUbuntu, open terminal from start menu and run the command:

sudo apt update && sudo install lubuntu-restricted-extras

That’s all. Enjoy!

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How to Install Opus 1.2 Audio Library in Ubuntu 16.04, 14.04

Last updated: June 22, 2017

The Opus audio codec reached the new major 1.2 release a few days ago with many quality improvements, new features, and bug fixes.

Changes in Opus 1.2 includes:

  • Speech quality improvements especially in the 12-20 kbit/s range
  • Improved VBR encoding for hybrid mode
  • More aggressive use of wider speech bandwidth, including fullband speech starting at 14 kbit/s
  • Music quality improvements in the 32-48 kb/s range
  • Generic and SSE CELT optimizations
  • Support for directly encoding packets up to 120 ms
  • DTX support for CELT mode
  • SILK CBR improvements
  • Support for all of the fixes in draft-ietf-codec-opus-update-06 (the mono downmix and the folding fixes need --enable-update-draft)
  • Many bug fixes, including integer wrap-arounds discovered through fuzzing (no security implications)

Besides building the codec from source, a third-party PPA now is available to make it easy to install Opus 1.2 in Ubuntu 16.04 and/or Ubuntu 14.04.

1. Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or by application launcher, when it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/ffmpeg-3

Type in your password (no visual feedback due to security reason) when it asks and hit Enter.

2. Then upgrade the library and opus-tools via Software Updater:

Or simply run commands in terminal:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install libopus0 opus-tools

NOTE: the PPA contains the latest FFMPEG 3 packages. If you want to install it, the Tesseract OCR PPA is required in Ubuntu 14.04 for the dependencies.

f you don’t want to upgrade your ffmpeg libraries, remove the PPA via command:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:jonathonf/ffmpeg-3
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