Real and Windows media playback

In addition to restricted video formats such as MPEG, playback of other non-free formats such as Real media and Windows media, also requires manual installation. This comprehensive guide provides details. In my case I installed totem-xine (and its firefox-plugin), RealPlayer 10 and the win32 codecs.

MPEG/MPG movie player

By default Ubuntu Dapper Drake supports various free video formats (ogg vorbis/theora) but not restricted formats such as MPEG. Therefore, following this informative guide, it is necessary to install the gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly (and optionally mpg321 & vorbis-tools) package in order to view MPEGs in the Totem movie player. These packages are available from the "Universe" and "Multiverse" repositories.