Portal:Multimedia

From openSUSE Community Wiki

Welcome to the Portal:Multimedia Portal edit

There are several multimedia formats that cannot be included on the openSUSE CDs/DVD because they are 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.

Topics edit

Restricted formats

Warning: 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.

Guides

To go through a simple wizard guiding you through the installation process of some additional multimedia codecs where necessary, see the relevant pages for each respective openSUSE version:

Version:

12.1

For openSUSE 12.1, see Restricted formats/12.1

Version:

11.4

For openSUSE 11.4, see Restricted formats/11.4

Version:

11.3

For openSUSE 11.3, see Restricted formats/11.3

Version:

11.2

For openSUSE 11.2, see Restricted formats/11.2

Version:

Tumbleweed

For openSUSE Tumbleweed, see Restricted formats/Tumbleweed

Version:

Evergreen 11.1

For Evergreen 11.1, see Restricted formats/11.1

Free formats

Ogg

Ogg is a free, open standard container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. It is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia.

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 when possible.