Multimedia

From openSUSE Community Wiki

Support for some multimedia formats cannot be included on the openSUSE CDs because they're proprietary, patented, Restricted Formats. Some of these include MP3, MPEG-4, playing of Encrypted DVDs, etc. In many cases you can use free formats instead. Below we'll go through a few of these:

Free Formats

Ogg

Ogg is an open standard for a free container format for digital multimedia, unrestricted by software patents and designed for efficient streaming and manipulation. This includes both Audio and Video.

Being a Container format, Ogg can embed audio and video in various formats, and usually Ogg is used with the following:

Audio

Vorbis (lossy)- handles general audio data at mid- to high-level variable bitrates (~16-500 kbit/s/channel)
FLAC (lossless) - handles archival and high fidelity audio data.

Video

Theora - based upon On2's VP3, it is targeted at competing with MPEG-4 video (for example, encoded with DivX or Xvid), RealVideo, or Windows Media Video.

Software Freedom is important, please always use these where possible.

Restricted Multimedia Formats (MP3, MPEG-4, etc.)

To go through a simple wizard guiding you through the installation process of some additional multimedia codecs where necessary, see information on Restricted Formats wiki page.

Note: Different copyright and patent laws apply differently depending on what country you are in; if you are unsure about a particular restriction or patent, you might consider applying for legal advice. This site does not offer legal advice. For more information about why some formats/codecs are restricted and why they don't ship out-of-the-box on openSUSE, read Restricted formats.