2.4. Multimedia.

Section quotes:

• "For the next hour, WE will control all that you see and hear."
      -- found on 'fortune-mod'.
• "A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say."
      -- Michael Winner, British film director.
• "Truncate - the never-ending story. Makes me feel like a long Kurosawa movie. But in this one the hero will survive, or my name isn't Maxwell."
      -- Linus Torvalds on LKML.

Section contents:

• 2.4.1. XMMS.
• 2.4.2. MPlayer.
• 2.4.3. Xine.
• 2.4.4. Other multimedia players and editors.
• 2.4.5. File types.
• 2.4.6. Compact Discs (CD).

2.4.1. XMMS.

X MultiMedia System (xmms), one of most widly spread audio players, it comes with most distributions, it look and feel as Winamp, it even accept it's skins, but 'xmms' could also play MPEG video files (with some 'smpeg' plugin), with some plugins it could play real-audio and quick-time files, you can find them 'www.xmms.org' or from your distribution package repositories for example qt-xmms for QuickTime and rmxmms for RealAudio. RedHat Linux 8.0 and above (and Fedora) has remove MP3 support, download the plugin from RPM repositories like 'freshrpms.net',

Run 'xmms' then click on 'pl' to show play list panel, right click on the panel then select 'add file' or select it from the '+' button (there is also 'add dir' to add all files in a folder but can do that from 'add file' there is a button there), it will open a dialog to add files, to now how to interact with it see '3.1 File System Hierarchy.'. double click on any file in the list to play, use it as any stereo, there are a play button,pause,...,auto repeat, and shuffle.

If you like to change it's settings right click on an empty place then select 'prefrences' or press 'CTRL+P', it will show some tabs for:

Input plugin

Plugins to open file formats.

Output plugin

Sound drivers it could use, there is also a plugin to output to a wav file.

Effect plugin

Some effects you could add dynamicly to the sound.

visulization

Moving shapes that let you feel the sound with your eye.

You may change the look of XMMS by installing skins, they are a '.zip' files (it's compitable with winamp) all you have todo is to put those files on your '~/.xmms/Skins' folder, if you want all users to see those plugins put them in '/usr/share/xmms/Skins' or '/usr/X11R6/share/xmms/Skins' then run XMMS and right click on it and select 'skin browser'. If you like better themes than Winamp you may use Kjofol-skins and Digideck-Skins if you install and enable 'xmms-kjofol' visulization plugin, then put skins in '~/.xmms/kjofol' or '/usr/share/xmms/kjofol', then click on 'configure plugin' to select the skin then XMMS is no more a rectangle! If you like 'kjofol' it's available for Windows at 'www.kjofol.org'. You can get any type of skins from'www.skinz.org' and 'www.customize.org'

2.4.2. MPlayer.

Linux Media Player, one of the most powerful video players and converters, it could handle 'divx' files (DVD quality format), it could use Windows media player DLL plugins!! it put them in '/usr/lib/win32' it comes with Mandrake 9.1 (and above), RedHat user may get it from MPlayer main site 'www.mplayerhq.hu' or from any RPM repositories like 'freshrpms.net'.

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The main MPlayer site divide it into those packages :

• mplayer-common-XX.i386.rpm The main mplayer core.
• mplayer-gui-XX.i386.rpm it contain gmplayer a GTK+ interface to MPlayer.
• mplayer-skin-default-XX.noarch.rpm the default skins (at least one skin).

• mplayer-codecs-extralite-XX.i386.rpm some extra codecs for real-audio and quick-time
• mplayer-XX.rpm command line MPlayer.

• mplayer-skin-phony-XX.noarch.rpm
• mplayer-skin-AlienMind-XX.noarch.rpm
• mplayer-skin-Blue-XX.noarch.rpm
• mplayer-skin-CornerMP-aqua-XX.noarch.rpm
• mplayer-skin-xine-lcd-XX.noarch.rpm

If you face any problem with it try it from the command line to see the error, then try different drivers for example 'xv', 'xvidix', 'x11', 'xshm', 'vesa', 'gl' or 'dga' using '-vo' type 'mplayer -vo help' to see available drivers, if you have a nVidia card you had better get nVidia driver not the XFree86 one, see '4.1 Hardware configaration.' section, for exmaple you may run mplayer or gmplayer like this 'mplayer -vo x11 myfile.mpg' or 'mplayer -vo xv myfile.mpg', Xv, Xvidix and DGA (only root can use DGA) are fast drivers, and others are slower.

bash$ su
bash# mplayer -vo dga myfile.mpg

To convert from file format to anotther we do an encoding process with 'mencoder' for exmaple 'mencoder from.mpg -o to.avi' you may specify the codecs '-ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4' you may replace 'mpeg4' with any codecs like 'mjpeg' or '-ovc divx4', you may scale the picture with something like '-vop scale=640:480'.

2.4.3. Xine.

A very common video program (it comes even with Live Linux CDs), it can open many formats and it's fast and nice looking. I faced some problems with Xine version 0.9.13 that comes with my Mandrake 9.0 with S3 video card, it crashes many times maybe because S3 driver or because KDE 3.0 lock the sound card, I don't know exactly, but this problem disapeared in next versions, if you face this problem reboot and login to GNOME and try different driver. Recent Xine versions can play Real, Quicktime, and DIVX even if it's avi.

Using Xine User Interface 'xine-ui' is very simple, you could use it from keyboard, use left/right arrows for slow/fast motion, or even in backword direction (put the cursor at the end of the file then play it back!), press 'h' to show/hide the panel. You could use it by mouse.

As MPlayer we have many drivers for example Xv is a very fast driver, on the other hand XShm is an old driver that works every where.

xine --help # List drivers
# xine -V { driver }
xine -V XShm
xine -V OpenGL
xine -V X11
xine -V Xv

2.4.4. Other multimedia players and editors.

We have many other players, most of them are just front-end of the previous player: 'totem' It's a nice normal looking simple Xine front-end, it does NOT look as stereo. 'kaffeine' A native KDE front-end to Xine. 'noatun' KDE media player. 'kaboodle' Another KDE media player. 'gstreamer' ('gst' for short) It is a GNOME player that supports many format. 'kmidi' Music midi player for KDE. 'rhythmbox' Audio player for GNOME, it looks like a computer application NOT a stereo. 'juk' Audio player for KDE. 'Kscd' CDROM player for KDE. 'aKtion' anotther media player for KDE. 'gnome-sound-recorder' as the name impies. 'krec' recorder for KDE. 'kaudiocreator' CD ripper and audio encoder. 'gnome-cd' CDROM player for GNOME. 'smpeg' The most light weight MPEG video player, it's a SDL application that work even with bad video driver. 'mpg321' A command line MP3 player. 'mp3blaster' A console interactive MP3 and ogg player. Linux could be used as a video studio, with packages like 'Cinelerra', 'AVIDEMUX2', 'Linux Video Studio' and 'Kino'(kino.sf.net and www.schirmacher.de/arne/kino). and audio studio like 'Audacity', GNU Sound, 'lame' and 'Glame'. We have many programs to convert different types like 'Trancode', 'kmediagrab' and 'kmencoder'. Thanks to Eng. Khaled Moustafa Ahmed for telling me about those specialized programs.

2.4.5. File types.

To be able to play RealAudio with MPlayer and other players, you the most easy way is to download the native RealPlayer8 or 9 from the their site, it's name is 'rp8-VERSION-RELEASE.bin' and run it as root. or get it as a package from your distribution packages repositories.

Video files '.dat' will not work because it's not a DAT file, it's an '.mpeg' file, just rename them to be '.mpeg' or '.mpg' files. If you have a wav or AVI files that refuse to work that will be because they are not just raw MS WAV or AVI, they could be MPEG encoded AVI (I'm not kidding, it's Microsoft policy to make every thing looks as a product of them) AVI and WAV will be just a container to other codecs, use more recent MPlayer or Xine with more codecs and send a warning to the producer of this file, If it's an MPEG files call it MPEG.

2.4.6. Compact Discs (CD).

• 'k3b' The most simple nice CD burner for KDE.
• 'xcdroast' A GTK+ CD burner.
• 'gnometoaster' Another CD burner for GNOME
• 'nautilus-cd-burn' GNOME allow you to burn CDs just using your file browser nautilus, type 'burn:// in location then just drag and drop files.
• 'eroaster' Another burner using GTK+ python script.
• 'cdrecord' and 'mkisofs' The real command line back-ends tools, they contain some useful tools like 'cdda2wav' and 'cdda2ogg'.