Well I would suggest trying mplayer or VLC as a media player. I find a LOT of media files that Totem is unable to play.
update your sources list to include the
debian-multimedia repository.
Code:
it-etch:~# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.uwsg.indiana.edu/linux/debian/ etch main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.uwsg.indiana.edu/linux/debian/ etch main non-free contrib
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org etch main
Install the GPG keyring for the repository to get rid of the unsigned packages warning
aptitude update
aptitude install debian-multimedia-keyring
Install the
windows32 codecs, and
mplayer or
vlc, or BOTH. My preference is for vlc, although a lot of people prefer mplayer. I just install both and if I run into a media file that gives me grief I try all the differnt media players until I find one that works.
aptitude install w32codecs mplayer mozilla-mplayer vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/info.html