a list of the most common video formats and their associated file extensions,
although many more exist:
AVI (.avi)—The Windows audiovisual format
FLV (.flv)—Used in Adobe Flash; supports H.264 and others
MPEG (.mpeg)—The MPEG video format; also known as .mpg
MOV (.mov)—A QuickTime video format
OGV/OGG (.ogv/.ogg)—The Ogg Theora freely licensed video
format
QT (.qt)—The QuickTime video format from Apple
WEBM (.webm)—Google’s royalty-free container for audio and video
(such as in VP8 format) designed for HTML5Viewing Video in Linux
Out of the box, Ubuntu does not support any of the proprietary video codecs
due to licensing restrictions. However, this functionality can be acquired if
you install the ubuntu-restricted-extras package from the Ubuntu
software repositories. You can learn more about it at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats.
You can watch video files and video DVDs with Totem Movie Player, which
is installed by default. This may also be used with several other file formats
and for both video and audio and is especially well suited for almost anything
you are likely to want to use after you install the ubuntu-restricted-
extras package.
Another interesting video viewer application is VLC, which is available in the
software repositories and also for other operating systems, like Windows and
macOS. VLC uses its own set of audio and video codecs and supports a wider
range of video formats than any other media player we have encountered. If
VLC can’t play it, it probably can’t be played.
Personal Video Recorders
The best reason to attach a television antenna to your computer is to use the
video card and the computer as a personal video recorder.
The commercial personal video recorder TiVo started a new trend by using
Linux running on a PowerPC processor to record television programming