Chapter 10. Multimedia Applications


IN THIS CHAPTER

  • Burning CDs and DVDs in Ubuntu

  • Sound and Music

  • Viewing TV and Video

  • Reference

Go up to anyone in the street today and ask them what an iPod is, and you are sure to get a correct answer. Apple's phenomenal success with their now ubiquitous personal music player has driven the digital music market like no one else. Rewind back to the early nineties then, where most users were limited to Window's Sound Recorder and the idea of "ripping" CDs was virtually unheard of. Thankfully Linux has been at the forefront of the digital music landscape, although the continuing DRM saga can make it difficult to listen and manipulate digital media on the Linux platform.

Ubuntu itself is armed with a wide variety of applications designed to help you manage your digital media collection. You can rip music from CDs, stream them across your network, sync them with your personal music player, burn them to discin short you can do anything with them that you want.

This chapter takes you through the steps to burn CDs and DVDs using the tools supplied with Ubuntu. You will also find out how to rip music from CDs using a variety of tools, as well as the applications that can manage your music library. Finally we will take a look at how you can watch TV and video using Ubuntu.

Note

Ubuntu is founded on the freedom of software, both in terms of free speech and free beer (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software for an explanation of the two terms) which means that it does not ship with any legally dubious software. By legally dubious, we mean any software that may infringe patents or other country-specific laws. One of the main casualties of this is MP3 support which is the most widely used audio codec across the world. Of course we would recommend that you use the totally free and open source Ogg/Vorbis codec, but we also realize that you may already have splashed out on that new iPod and want to use it with Ubuntu. To get MP3 support in Ubuntu you will need to activate both the Universe and Multiverse to give you access to the required packages, and then at the command line type:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer-plugins-ugly


This will give you access to the LAME libraries, which will allow you to create MP3 files using Ubuntu.

Please make sure that you work within the laws of your country. We cannot be held responsible for you breaking the law!




Ubuntu Unleashed
Ubuntu Unleashed 2011 Edition: Covering 10.10 and 11.04 (6th Edition)
ISBN: 0672333449
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 318

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net