General :: Banshee Doesn't Play All Media Formats

After installing and gradually becoming familiar with OpenSUSE v11.2 [Gnome], I've been casually trying to get acquainted with the Bash shell and its commands. However, for this problem I thought it would be more appropriate to log in here, since this issue is a bit more serious. Accordingly, I'm afraid that I must once again prevail upon the helpful, patient, knowledgeable Linux users in this forum for assistance.As a retiree and a doting grandfather, I enjoy the luxury and time to take numerous videos of my children and grandchildren, and one of the features to which I've become spoiled in Windows is the ability to play a wide variety of video formats. Unfortunately, "out of the box", Banshee appears to refuse to play any of them. Somehow, using YaST, I was able to get online flash video to work by downloading and installing recommended packages, and it worked the first time after re-booting my system! However, I'm not having as much luck with installing video codecs that I apparently need to play my own video files. I wish these codecs had come pre-installed on the OpenSUSE disc that I burned, but you can't always get what you want. [Wasn't that the title of a 60's or 70's Rolling Stones song?]

I guess where I need help, specifically, is in determing where to get and how to install the best free video player and a comprehensive codec package that will work reliably in OpenSUSE. Would some kind soul out there be able to take me by the hand and show me, step by step, exactly what I must do to achieve this goal? I was hoping to be able to use the automatic package installer, but when I tried it, I noticed diagnostics informing me that I lacked certain dependencies, and that I should install manually, which I assume requires using the command line. I have no objection to trying this, if someone would be kind enough to show me exactly how. I really would like to be able to watch my grandchildren playing without having to depend upon one of my Windows systems.