Playing MP3 and MP4 files on Linux installations

The MP3 and MP4 files have a proprietory patented and therefore they are not included in the OpenSuSe installation CDs or DVD. There is not an immediate way to play them on Linux machines.

However you can install some software which will allow you to access also MP3 or MP4 audio and video files from Linux.

I recently had to solve this problem because I had received some interesting files about website traffic in MP4 format and I wanted to access them from my OpenSuSe 11.0 Linux system.

I was finally able to access them by doing what follows:

1. I accessed the Proprietary Media Support site of OpenSuSe with the URL http://software.opensuse.org/codecs. There is a suggestion to install Xine (Advanced Audio Coding) and to download the codecs from a couple of other sites. I downloaded the additional codecs from the OpenSuSe community site at http://opensuse-community.org/Multimedia which finally directed me to download from http://opensuse-community.org/Restricted_Formats/

2. The installation adds some special repositories to the normal ones as follows:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.0/repo/non-oss/suse (Main Repository (NON-OSS))
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.0/repo/oss (Main Repository (OSS))
http://ftp.skynet.be/pub/packman/suse/11.0/ (Packman Repository)
http://opensuse-guide.org/repo/11.0/ (Libdvdcss repository)

You should install the following:

ffmpeg
flash-player
gst-fluendo-mp3
libdvdcss
libxine1
libxine1-codecs
w32codec-all


3. I chose to install also kaffeine (a xine based media player for KDE). However the initial installation had some problems because I received messages that library libxvidcore.so.4 was missing.

4. I tried to find some information about it on some user forums and I foud a suggesion to install also:

Amarok = Media Player for KDE
Mplayer (MP3/MP4 support)

I was finally able to install correctly all software without any dependency problem.

I hope that this information will be useful.