How to play any media with Totem

This guide is for Ubuntu 8.4, 8.10, 9.04

Keep in mind this is not perfect and the buffer is some what slow and you get the occasional skip but the quality is good, but that also depends on the quality of your Graphic Card and your processor, Im running "ATI Radeon Pro 2600" and "Intel(R) Pentium(R) D(2) CPU 3.00GHz" and it works well.
By default Totem comes installed in Ubuntu as the Gnome default player. If you got rid of it at one point just go to Synaptic Package Manager and reinstall it or just type this code in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install totem-gstreamer

You can choose between totem-gstreamer and totem-xine

To install the codecs just click Applications > Add/Remove Programs and then in the Show dropdown list, select All Available Applications. Ensure All is selected in the list on the left, and then use the Search box to search for:

gstreamer

Put a check alongside the following plugins, then click the Apply Changes button:

GStreamer extra plugins

GStreamer ffmpeg video plugin

Ubuntu restricted extras

GStreamer plugins for mms, wavpack, quicktime, musepack

GStreamer plugins for aac, xvid, mpeg2, faad

GStreamer fluendo MPEG2 demuxing plugin

or you can Install Totem-GStreamer and extra codecs by typing this command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install totem-gstreamer gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse 

also install the Medibuntu repositories code:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Then, add the GPG Key code:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

if by some odd reason you don't see any of the plugins when you search for GSTREAMER search for them one at a time.
Once you have installed all the plugins go to the Yahoo HD movies trailer section to try it out, if you're using FireFox you maight see a download windows like this one asking you what you want to do with the "qtl file".
Make sure you have selected Totem as your default player and just press OK.

now you should be able to watch HD trailers
note: The Apple trailers only worked with FireFox and not Opera.

To enable DVD movie playback, you’ll need to complete two more step. Ensure Synpatic is closed (and no other software installation application is currently running, such as Update Manager), and then open a terminal window. Type the following:

sudo apt-get install totem-xine libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdread3

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

Note: you will need to choose the Xine version of Totem Movie Player
if you want fuss-free DVD movie playback.