Playing WMA Pro content using 32bit mplayer on 64bit Linux

Problem

You cannot play new WMA media (aka wma9) content on your 64bit Linux system because of missing audio format support, e.g you get an error message similar like that:

Cannot find codec for audio format 0x162.

Solution

  1. Get win32codecs
  2. Unpack the files to /usr/lib/codecs,e .g. with
    tar xvjf essential-20071007.tar.bz2
    mkdir -p /usr/lib/codecs
    mv essential-20071007/* /usr/lib/codecs/
    ln -s /usr/lib/codecs /usr/lib/win32
    
  3. add the path to the library search path so the libraries can be found:
    echo "/usr/lib/win32/" > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/win32codecs.conf
    ldconfig
    
  4. Obtain the mplayer 32bit package (built for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala). Only the 32bit version can make use of the win32codecs!
  5. Install the deb package: dpkg -i mplayer32_1.0svn_amd64.deb
  6. Run the 32bit mplayer with /usr/bin/mplayer32 <URL>
  7. MPlayer should now play the stream or file, enjoy!!