I have Ubuntu with the Totem video player. I want to play AVI video files, so I downloaded the codecs in tar compressed format (MPlayer-1.0rc1.tar, approx. 8 MB file) and burned it on a CD from Windows. After I load the CD with this tar file on my Ubuntu computer, what do I do from there?

Please don't assume I know much, although I can follow the directions if you post them.

If I have to log on as admin, please also guide me here too.

I am re-learning Linux so I don't remember much basics yet.

Someone gave me a link to this fix,
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats
it seemed to be what I need, but I can't follow those directions very well.

It is a package that appears when you have the total universe of packages unlocked ( all applictaions) in your deb add software program. Download and apply and say 'yes' whenever asked ( e.g. java).

Ngant17,
If you are on fiesty, and I hope you are, then see this about multimendia in ubuntu fiesty. It's real easy:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=413626

Well, basically, I have MPlayer-1.0rc1.tar
and I don't have network access enabled on this Linux machine, so I want to use the file to get the AVIs to work. How do I work with this existing file in
Linux, it is 8 Mbytes big so I know it probably has most of the code I need.

You would be better of with VLC Player which comes with all the codecs pre-packaged.