Can't play movie files with Firfox in Ubuntu

Factual Questions
1

OK, so when I try to load webpges that have embedded movie files (so far they have all been wmv files,) I get the following error:

"Totem could not load d://0

There were no decoders found to handle the stream, you might need to install the corresponding plugins"

When I right-click and select ‘about,’ I get:

"Totem Mozilla Plugin 1.2.0

Movie Player using GStreamer version 0.8.11
Copyright © 2002-2005 Bastien Nocera"

I try to right click and select ‘preferences’ but nothing comes up.

I gathered that totem is the plugin that plays windows media files, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Is there a way to update/reinstall it? Bear in mind I know next to nothing about linux/ubuntu, so detailed instructions are needed.

2

First let me preface by saying that I’m a debian user and I’m really not sure how ubuntu handles it’s apt-repositories. That out of the way:

Totem is a linux video player like windows media player for windows. In order to play specific files in needs a codec to tell it how to decode that file. In this case it sounds like Totem can’t handle (i.e. doesn’t have the codec for) wmv files. WMV is a windows video and has never played nice with linux.

This link might help, if you want to continue using Totem/Xine:

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-3450.html

I’ve never had much luck with xine. If you really want a better solution install mplayer. Mplayer is “the” video player for linux and with the proper codecs it’ll play any file. I don’t believe debian/ubuntu provides an apt-source for mplayer (although they do for the mozilla plugin - strange.) It looks like this would be a very unofficial apt source for mplayer for debian sarge “deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ sarge main”

Also, I believe this might help: http://ubuntuguide.org/#mplayer

Alternate instructions if above doesn’t work to install mplayer:

http://www.princessleia.com/MPlayer.html

I’m afraid, though, that getting streaming video playing in linux is not easy.

Apologies for not being more detailed I’m running out the door.