How to play Wmv9 files on AMD64 Ubuntu

February 22, 2007 · General · Email This Post

Playing back wmv9 files on AMD64 is tricky. On i386 you can use mplayer with the win32 codecs, or the experimental vc-1 codec. However, using AMD64, things get a bit more difficult. It is possible to use the 32bit mplayer package, but it requires that all the libraries that it depends on are also 32bit.

Install all ia32-libs packages

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs lib32asound2 lib32ncurses5 ia32-libs-sdl ia32-libs-gtk lib32stdc++6 ia32-libs-openoffice.org2.

Download the package

Dapper Users

http://folk.ntnu.no/grannas/debs/mplayer32_1.0pre7-1_amd64.deb

Edgy Users

http://folk.ntnu.no/grannas/debs/mplayer32_20070130-1_amd64.deb

Install the package Using the following commands

Dapper Users

sudo dpkg -i mplayer32_1.0pre7-1_amd64.deb

Edgy Users

sudo dpkg -i mplayer32_20070130-1_amd64.deb

Fetch the Win32 codecs from http://www.people.virginia.edu/~drf8f/MPlayer/releases/codecs/essential-20060501.tar.bz2

Unpack it and install to /usr/lib/win32.

tar -jxvf essential-20060501.tar.bz2

sudo mkdir /usr/lib/win32

sudo cp essential-20060501/* /usr/lib/win32/

Use mplayer32 to play wmv9 files (but it can also be used for other files as well )

If you want a 32 bit mencoder as well, you can download it from here

http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~grannas/debs/mencoder32 and put it into /usr/bin/ .

If you want to use the gmplayer gui, rather than the command-line do the following:

sudo rm /usr/bin/gmplayer
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/mplayer32 /usr/bin/gmplayer

This operation has to be done manually as the gmplayer file is "owned" by the original mplayer package.

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5 Comments to “How to play Wmv9 files on AMD64 Ubuntu”

  1. Brian says:
    February 27, 2007 at 11:21 pm

    Thanks very much for this guide. I’ve been trying to get this to work forever and your guide really helped out.

    [Reply]

  2. Jorge says:
    March 19, 2007 at 9:44 pm

    Thanks for the guide. I have kubuntu edgy. I have one little problem: it worked, but now kaffeine does not open or play any files.

    [Reply]

  3. Sebastian says:
    March 23, 2007 at 10:39 pm

    due to mplayer32 the upgrade from dapper to edgy fails
    see the bug: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/94773
    ca you help trace the mplayer32 maintainer to get bug reported.
    Thank you

    [Reply]

  4. Karry says:
    April 11, 2008 at 9:26 pm

    1000x THANK YOU! I can now watch czech music station Ocko in best quality :) (vmw9)mimms mmsh://stream.idnes.cz/ocko-tv-hq?MSWMExt=.asf - | mplayer32 -

    [Reply]

  5. Ryan says:
    April 14, 2010 at 8:13 pm

    How about later version of Ubuntu – Karmic?

    [Reply]

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