How do I install Win32 codecs
 

I went and got the win32all codecs tar from Packman, extracted this to an RPM file in my bin folder, set this folder as an installation source, and enabled it, but whenever I go to install the package the package manager tells me my sources will not refresh.

I have some kind of problem with codecs everytime I install a new version of SuSE Linux, and the old solution never works for the new problem. I understand the copyright issues that force us to acquire the codecs this way, but I don't understand why installing software has to be such a cryptic process. Can anyone help?

Go to http://packman.links2linux.org/ and search for win32. Download w32codecs (w32codec-all-20050412-0.pm.0.i586.rpm) and install it as root by doing "rpm -Uvh
w32codec-all-20050412-0.pm.0.i586.rpm".

Thanks reddazz. Followed your instructions and then rebooted. Totem says there are still no codecs. Could it because I downloaded the 10.1 codecs rathter than the 10.0 codecs (10.0 is what I have installed from discs bought from Amazon)?

There is no need to reboot your computer when you install Linux packages (apart from when you install or upgrade the kernel). The codecs should work even if they are meant for 10.1. What kind of file are you trying to play? Totem has totally disabled the option to configure the win32 codecs path and I am not sure how to configure this. Once I find out I will let you know.

I'm trying to play .mpg, .wmv, .avi and sometimes Quicktime. Is there perhaps another player I could use besides Totem? Thanks for all your help.

Have you tried mplayer?
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPlayer

It plays most videos and music without the need for codecs. Plays mov mpg avi (divx, xvid) wma mp3 wmv. It also plays VCDs, DVDs and audio CDs.
it has both GUI and CLI interfaces.

You could search for SuSE RPMs in rpm.pbone.net or rpmfind.net

Kaffeine works fine for me with the packman win32 codecs. If you don't run KDE you can just install xine-ui instead of kaffeine. You could try mplayer, but I personally don't like it.

I did the gnome installation, but I seem to remember that I could run some KDE programs from gnome. Is kaffeine not one of those? Is xine-ui something that comes with the distribution discs? I'm going to go rummage around and see what I can find. In the meantime any additional advice you might have re the above questions would be great. Thanks guys.

I just installed xine-ui and tried to play and mpg file. No go. I get an error message. No demuxer codec it says. Now I'm going to see if I can access kaffeine through gnome.

kaffeine is just a frontend for xine. What you need to do is tinker with the xine settings and point it to your win32 codecs.

Same problem with kaffeine. No plugin to handle .mpg files. I guest mplayer may be the next option, but that will provoke a whole new round of questions about how to do that, since YaST does seem to really install anything that wasn't already on the disks. LOL I await any further advice any wise and helpful person might have.

Opened xine from the menu. Got a pretty little window with "there is no mrl" at the top and no way for me to do anything with it. So I opened kaffiene to see if I could tinker with the xine settings through that. I clicked on the decoder icon and found that the external win32 codec path was set for /usr/lin/win32. That seemed right. I went to that directory and saw all sorts of nice little dll, etc. including ones with mpg names, so that seems to right. Except that something's wrong.

I've just had a thought. Xine may be looking for the codecs in /usr/lib/codecs. You can resolve this by doing as root,
After that try running Xine. You can also change this by doing Xine -> Settings -> Decoder and change the paths to /usr/lib/win32. As for Kaffeine, you can go to Settings -> xine engine parameters -> decoder and change the paths to /usr/lib/win32. It may also help if you uninstall Suses xine and xine-lib packaes and use the ones from packman or http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/xine/ .

Okay, I changed the path as recommended. No go. Now I'll try uninstalling xine and reinstalling from another source. Have to go out to a family dinner, so I may not get to this until tomorrow. But when I do I'm sure I'll be back with more questions. Thank you so much for your help.

I'm back from dinner. I downloaded the xine-lib and xine-ui rpm's from Packman and tried to install them in terminal. The installations failed because of dependency problems. There were about 5 or 6 of these problems. It's a problem. LOL

Any suggestions?