To get the most out of Xine and other media players such as MPlayer you will need to install additional codecs. In order to do this open Firefox, go to
http://www4.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/ and download (save to disk) all-20060501.tar.bz2. This should save the file to your home folder. If it saves the file to your desktop instead go to your desktop and drag the file into your "Home" folder. (Left mouse click on the file and drag it on top of your "Home" folder while holding the left mouse button down. Then release the mouse button.)
Open the terminal. Type: su
Hit enter. Type your root password. Hit enter.
Type: mkdir /usr/local/lib/codecs/
Hit enter.
Type: mkdir /usr/lib/win32
Hit enter.
Type: tar xvfj *.tar.bz2
Hit enter.
Type: rm *.tar.bz2
Hit enter. Type "y" and hit enter.
Type: cp ./all-20060501/* /usr/local/lib/codecs/
Hit enter.
Type: chmod 755 /usr/local/lib/codecs/*
Hit enter.
Type: cp /usr/local/lib/codecs/* /usr/lib/win32/
Hit enter.
Type: rm -rf ./all-20060501
Hit enter. Close the terminal. The additional codecs are now installed.
To obtain MPlayer configure yum as described in the yum section above and install the extra codecs as described in the Xine section above, then open the terminal. Type: su -
Hit enter. Type your root password. Hit enter.
Type: yum -y install mplayer mplayer-skins mplayer-fonts
Hit enter and wait for the installation to complete.
Type: gmplayer
Hit enter. Mplayer will open. Close it. Close the Terminal.
Open a terminal as your regular user (not root). Type: gmplayer
Hit enter. Mplayer will open. Click on the tool icon. (It looks like a small wrench.) Configure your preferred options. Close the terminal. MPlayer should now be available in "Applications" > "Sound & Video".
Thomas Chung of FedoraNEWS.org has kindly made an Mplayer plugin rpm build available for Fedora Core 5 which is "RealMedia disabled" (including the SMIL and OGG Mime Types) so that it will not conflict with your RealPlayer installation. To obtain this Mplayer plug-in for playing web-embedded movies and multimedia in your web browser install Mplayer as described above and make sure your sound card is configured properly for it, then open Firefox, go to
http://fedoranews.org/tchung/mplayerplug-in/3.25/ and download (save to disk) mplayerplug-in-3.25-1.fc5.i386.rpm. This should save the file to your home folder. If it saves the file to your desktop instead go to your desktop and drag the file into your "Home" folder. (Left mouse click on the file and drag it on top of your "Home" folder while holding the left mouse button down. Then release the mouse button.) Then open the terminal.
Type: su
Hit enter. Type your root password. Hit enter.
Type: rpm -Uvh *.rpm
Hit enter. Wait for the installation to complete.
Type: rm *.rpm
Hit enter. Type "y" and hit enter. Close the terminal.
Close and restart Firefox to enable the plugin. (Note that by default the mplayerplug-in files are installed in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins. Normally Firefox looks in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins for its plugins by default. If you have trouble with the mplayerplug-in in Firefox log in as root and do a "cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins", hit enter, then do a "cp mplayerplug-in* /usr/lib/firefox-1.5.0.1/plugins" and hit enter. This will copy the appropriate mplayerplug-in files into your current Firefox installation's plugin directory. If your current Firefox installation directory is not /usr/lib/firefox-1.5.0.1 substitute the correct directory name in the above command.) In order to keep yum from overwriting this special version of mplayerplug-in after you install it you should do a "yum --exclude mplayerplug-in update" when you do your updates with yum. (Or for a permanent fix add the line "exclude=mplayerplug-in" to your /etc/yum.conf file. Be sure there is a new line/carriage return at the end of the file.) You could go to
http://www.apple.com/trailers/ to test your MPlayer plugin installation. (Note: In some cases an embedded video will appear to load to 99 percent and then stop. If this occurs just hit the play button on the bottom left hand side of the mplayerplug-in window and playback will begin. You can maximize the window with the bottom right hand button in the mplayerplug-in window.)