Installing plugins for playing movies and music

As a Fedora user and system administrator, you can use these steps to install additional multimedia plugins that enable you to play various video and audio types.

If you live in a country where software patents apply, such as in the United States or in Japan, you need to obtain multimedia codecs from a source that legally distributes patented software in your country. For example, see the Fluendo Codec Pack: https://fluendo.com/en/products/enterprise/fluendo-codec-pack/.

The following procedures only apply to users in countries that do not recognize software patents. The steps are:

  1. Enable RPM Fusion. You can choose one of the following ways to accomplish it:

  2. Install new packages: Installing multimedia plug-ins with DNF

Enabling the RPM Fusion repositories using graphical applications

This procedure describes how to enable the RPM Fusion software repositories without using any command-line utilities.

Prerequisites

  • You have internet access.

  • You are using the Gnome desktop environment.

Procedure

  1. In your web browser, open the following page: https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration.

  2. To enable the Free repository, click the RPM Fusion free for Fedora version link on the page, where version is the Fedora release you are using. This prompts you to save or open the repo file.

  3. Open the file using the Software Install application.

  4. The Software application opens. Click the blue Install button.

  5. Optionally, enable the Nonfree repository: click the RPM Fusion nonfree for Fedora version link on the page, where version is the Fedora release you are using.

  6. Save and install the file with the Software application again.

Additional resources

  • If the graphical configuration fails, try enabling the repositories using command-line utilities instead.

Enabling the RPM Fusion repositories using command-line utilities

This procedure describes how to enable the RPM Fusion software repositories without using any graphical applications.

Prerequisites

  • You have internet access.

Procedure

  1. To enable the Free repository, use:

    $ sudo dnf install \
  https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

  2. Optionally, enable the Nonfree repository:

    $ sudo dnf install \
  https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

  3. The first time you attempt to install packages from these repositories, the dnf utility prompts you to confirm the signature of the repositories. Confirm it.

Additional resources

  • You can also use graphical applications to configure the repositories if you prefer.

Installing multimedia plug-ins with DNF

This procedure describes how to install packages that provide additional multimedia libraries that enable you to play various video and audio files.

Prerequisites

  • Enable the RPM Fusion software repositories.

Procedure

  • Use the dnf utility to install packages that provide multimedia libraries:

    $ sudo dnf install gstreamer1-libav gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free \
       gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-extras \
       gstreamer1-plugins-bad-freeworld gstreamer1-plugins-bad-nonfree \
       gstreamer1-plugins-good gstreamer1-plugins-ugly lame-libs lame-libs

$ sudo dnf group upgrade --with-optional Multimedia

Third party repositories

There are a number of third-party software repositories for Fedora. They have more liberal licensing policies and provide software packages that Fedora excludes for various reasons. These software repositories are not officially affiliated or endorsed by the Fedora Project. Use them at your own discretion. For complete list, see FedoraThirdPartyRepos The following repositories are commonly used by end users and do not conflict with each other:

Mixing third party software repositories

Mixing a lot of third party repositories is not recommended since they might conflict with each other causing instability and hard to debug issues. If you are not a technical user, one way is to not enable the third-party repo by default and instead use the --enablerepo switch for yum or dnf, or a similar method configurable in the graphical package manager.

The purpose of RPM Fusion

The RPM Fusion project is community-maintained software repository providing additional packages that cannot be distributed in Fedora for legal reasons. Software patents apply to some of the packages in RPM Fusion, and as a consequence, it might not be legal to install these packages in certain countries: for example, in the United States or in Japan.

RPM Fusion also provides packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Additional resources

  • There are also media players that include all relevant codecs by themselves. Consider using one of the following for offline video viewing:

    • VLC, available from the vlc package in RPM Fusion Free

    • MPV, available from the mpv package in RPM Fusion Free