From the VLC website:

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Basically the reason that this program is so great is that it can play just about anything you throw at it! It handles quite a bit just out of the box and is cross-platform for use on OSX or XP. Give it a try for your media playback, or check out my previous post for other gnome media players, or you might also want to see how to make sure you’ve installed ubuntu multimedia codecs for use with this or other players.

To install VLC player search via Synaptic for “vlc” or use the command below to install the main package and dependencies.

sudo aptitude install vlc

Is there anything that VLC can’t play? I haven’t run into anything yet? Have you?

At this point (years later) I have a dedicated media server running on my fiber connection to offer me access to my music collection from any available internet connection! It’s beautiful! All you’ll need to set this up is an Ubuntu machine (desktop, server, laptop–anything you can store media on) and an internet connection. It can also simply be used on a local network to share music with other users or between computers in your network or home.

sudo aptitude install gnump3d

(as always you can also install that from Synaptic Package manager or Adept).

After this is installed you might want to change a few settings (although it will work just “out-of-the-box” as well).

http://localhost:8888 (access to the media is web-based. this should work if you've just installed it on your local machine)

I changed a few settings to customize things to my use and you might want to do the same. Basically we’re just going to make sure that it knows where to find the media files and what port you’d prefer to use.

sudo gedit /etc/gnump3d/gnump3d.conf

Find the line that says:

root = /var/music

and update it to the location of your media. (ie; in my situation I store the music in /media/music)

You might also want to find the line:

port = 8888

and update it to the preferred port. You most likely do not need to change this. It’s personal preference for your network and settings.

A couple of other things you might want to setup. Gnump3d offers a list of themes for the interface. The default is ok, but I prefer another that ships with it. If you’d like to change the theme you can select the “Preferences” option in the menu system and try a few out. If you’d like to use the theme that I prefer you’d want to change the default by editing the line:

theme = Tabular

to:

theme = BlueBox

Ooh, and one more tip that you might be interested in. It is very easy to setup user access to your new media server. If you don’t want someone to have access to your music simple don’t give them a login username and password. To create a list of usernames and passwords for your server simple use the following. (If you do not set any users or passwords anyone will have access):

sudo gedit .password (this file should be located in the root folder of your media. ie; My path is /media/music/.password)

create a username and password pair using the syntax:

username:password (ie; joe:secret, or johnq:denzel)

Each new user and password should be listed on a new line. Enjoy your new musical goodness. Share the love around the network, around the office or around the world!

(I originally found these instructions as part of the Ubuntu Guide. You’ve got to give credit where credit is due.)