Chapter16.Multimedia

Chapter 16. Multimedia

Multimedia refers to digital sound and video. The possible uses for sound and video on computers is boundlessfrom playing CDs and DVDs to communicating over distances with sound and video to providing virtual tours to software that speaks and understands human languages. This is an application area that is growing and changing rapidly. Yesterday something was impossible; today it's feasible.

Sound and video are everywhere. Web excursions frequently encounter sound or video that you want to explore. Although working with multimedia files is much easier than it used to be, both for Windows and Linux, it can still be problematic on occasion. You are more likely to encounter problems in this area than any other.

This chapter describes more common uses of multimedia files. Most of the applications discussed in this chapter work easily out of the box. Some are included with Linux and some need to be installed. Software for more advanced multimedia applications, useful for musicians and moviemakers, is available, such as sound recorders, sound and video editors, and so forth. Advanced applications are not discussed in this chapter. See linux-sound.org for more information.

One music problem unique to open source software is the legal status of MP3. MP3 encoding (writing music into an MP3 file) is a patented procedure. Software that can encode in MP3 format must pay license fees, a requirement not compatible with open source licensing. Therefore, Linux distributions can't include MP3 encoders without paying license fees. Some Linux distributions include applications that can encode several types of files, including MP3 files, with the MP3 encoding disabled. Or don't include any MP3 encoders at all. For instance, Fedora includes the X Multimedia System without MP3 capabilities. Using MP3 encoding software for personal use, if you don't sell any MP3s, is believed by most to be perfectly legal. Licensing is applied to the developers of the encoders, not the users. You can see more at http://www.mp3licensing.com/.

However, an open source sound file format, Ogg Vorbis, is available with better sound quality for a given compression than MP3. If you're saving sound files for use on your Linux system, Ogg Vorbis is a better choice than MP3.