Linux Dummies 9th

Chapter 14: Messing with Video and Graphics
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The plugins you see depend on your specific Linux distribution and version.
By default, the Fedora 10 Firefox installation includes the following plugins:
✓ IcedTea Java Web Browser: Provides support for running Java applets
from Web pages, often used for animation
✓ MozPlugger: Plays QuickTime and Windows media file formats
✓ QuickTime: For playing Apple QuickTime videos in the MOV and QT
formats
✓ Totem Web Browser: A full-featured video and audio player that can display
AVI, ASF, WMV, OGG, and MPG video formats, as well as play WAV
and MP3 audio formats
✓ VLC Multimedia: Plays most standard video formats, including the VLC
format used by GoogleVideo
✓ Windows Media Player: Plugin for the Totem player that plays streaming
video in Microsoft formats, such as ASF, WMV, and WVX
✓ DivX Web Player: For playing DivX-encoded AVI videos
Although it may seem, on the surface, that you have most of your Web video
bases covered, you may be disappointed with your actual video results.
Although Totem supports the popular WMV and MOV video formats, there’s
more to quality video than just supporting the right file formats.
The Microsoft and QuickTime video formats use proprietary encoding
schemes called codecs that are strictly controlled under licensing agreements.
Microsoft Corporation controls the WMV video format and (you
guessed it) doesn’t provide a license for using this codec with most Linux
systems. As a result, Fedora doesn’t support WMV video formats by default.
The same applies to QuickTime MOV and QuickTime video files.
That said, some resourceful open-source programmers have reproduced the
codecs for the Microsoft video format and created a software package called
W32codec. Installing this package allows you to view almost every type of
video available on the Web.
Because W32codec is not considered a legal software package in the United
States, it is not included in the standard Fedora distribution. You can very
likely find it by looking on the Internet, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.
If you want to view Microsoft video formats in the United States in Linux —
legally — you can purchase the CrossOver Office commercial software for
Linux. It provides the appropriate codecs for viewing Macromedia Shockwave,
Windows Media Player, and Apple QuickTime movie formats, as well as the
libraries required to run many Microsoft applications directly on your Fedora
computer. You can find CrossOver Office at www.codeweavers.com.