Chapter 6 Multimedia Applications Ubuntu Unleashed Chapter 6 Multimedia Applications

Sound and Music Sound card drivers for Linux ALSA – Advanced Linux Sound Architecture OSS – Open Sound System Ubuntu uses ALSA as it's more current and has more support PulseAudio – a sound server used by Ubuntu A go between that allows various sound outputs to use ALSA

Adjusting Volume Simple Click speaker icon in top right corner Move slider left or right Custom Click speaker icon Select Sound Preferences Adjust balance, fade, subwoofer and volume

Sound Formats RAW Header less format MP3 Not supported by default, but installs a codec when you first try to play an MP3 WAV Uncompressed Windows format Ogg-Vorbis Ubuntu preferred – open source FLAC Lossless – huge file sizes but amazing audio quality Free Lossless Audio Codec

Listening to Music Rhythmbox Former default Ubuntu music application Listen to audio CDs Rip CDs to your music directory Appearance is similar to iTunes Banshee New default music application Also plays video Sound Juicer Retrieves track details Saves tracks in Ogg format

Graphics Shotwell Photo Manager Default Ubuntu photo manager Red eye reduction, cropping and color adjustment Will interface with Facebook, Flickr and Picasa GIMP Photoshop clone Great for video display, not so much for printing RGB vs CMYK

Scanners and Screen Capture Simple Scan Built in scanner software Screen Capture Press Prt Scr to capture entire desktop Alt+Prt Scr captures the active window

Graphic Formats BMP – Bitmaps – commonly used in MS Windows GIF – Graphics Interchange Format JPG – Joint Photographic Experts Group PCX – IBM Paintbrush PNG – Portable Network Graphics SVG – Scalable Vector Graphics TIF – Tagged Image File Format ImageMagick can convert between formats

Other Graphics Options Blender – 3D image and animation editor CinePaint – used by Hollywood studios darktable – RAW editor digiKam – photo management software Hugin – panoramic photo stitcher Inkscape – vector graphics creation & editing tool POV-Ray – 3D graphics program – uses ray tracing Radiance – lighting analysis and visualization Xara Xtreme – general purpose graphics editor

Digital Cameras 2 kinds – webcams & handheld cameras Webcams integrated (built in or plug in) Handheld digital cameras include most phones, tablets, etc. Just plug in via USB and Ubuntu mounts it Can be set to automatically import photos from your device Shotwell Photo Manger Default photo manager for Ubuntu

Burning Optical Discs This is a necessary skill for turning ISOs into install discs If you don't have a disc burning program go to Ninite and download/install CDBurnerXP (this is an application for windows, no Linux version yet) Ubuntu uses Brasero Use the “Burn Image” option to burn an ISO to disc You can also burn discs from command line If you have a blank CD or DVD you can experiment with the command line burning programs. Follow the guidelines in the chapter

Burning Optical Discs cont.

Video Formats AVI – MS Windows video format FLV – Used in Adobe Flash MPEG – video format MOV – QuickTime video format QT – another QuickTime format OGV/OGG – freely licensed format WEBM – royalty free audio/video container from Google

Watching Video Install “Ubuntu-restricted-extras” from repositories Will allow you to watch proprietary formats Totem Movie Player – default Flash – web content VLC – Plays almost everything Mythbuntu – turns your computer into a PVR (personal video recorder)

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