Moovida – the free open source media player for and Linux

Moovida is much More than a media player…

Moovida is much more than a simple media player… it is a cutting edge media center bringing the best of the internet to your TV screen. Automatically creating your own digital library you can browse from your sofa with a remote control. The elegant and easy to use interface automatically displays artwork and fan art throughtout and gives you access to movie synopsis and artist info.

Check the Features section for full details on what’s on offer…

	Watch movies & TV shows Catalog your movies, tv shows and other videos with integrated online content. Moovida supports HD and almost all file formats like divX, mkv, flv, h264, mov, ogg and much more without need for additional codecs.
	Enjoy your pictures Visualize the photos of your latest trip either from your hard drive or your flickr account in a nicely animated slideshow.
	Manage your music Access all of your songs easily, enhance your library with online services and find new music to listen to.
	Get connected Flickr, Youtube, Yes.fm, SHOUTcast and much more – extend the functionality of Moovida with new content from top internet sites. Listen online to your favorite songs, share your media with your friends on your network or scan other devices like your iPod with Moovida.

Full features list…

Install Moovida in Ubuntu Jaunty

First you need to edit /etc/apt/sources.list file

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following lines

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/moovida-packagers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/moovida-packagers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Save and exit

Add the GPG key using the following command

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com e478bb3b6bcd9f67c5137df13135cd5c26c2e075

Update the source list

sudo apt-get update

Install moovida using the the following command

sudo apt-get install moovida

This will complete the installation

Using Moovida

Open Moovida from Applications—>Sound & Video—>Moovida Media Center

Moovida Media Center is loading in progress

Moovida Media Center main Menu

Music screen

Movie Screen

Picture Screen

TV Shows screen

Plugins Screen

Devices & Screen

You can download plugins from here

Format External Memory Media in Linux with Gnome Format

Gnome Format is a tool to easily format (erase and initialize) external memory media like USB sticks or SD/MMC flash cards for your PC. It is designed for Linux based operating systems using the GNOME desktop.

gparted is really good to format hard disks and make partitions and so on, but if I have a *non-formatted* usb stick and plug it into my system, the system usually does nothing at all! And thats the field for gnome-format! It’s easy to use, simple and small. For bigger tasks such as making partitions there is gparted!

You can download the source from here, or if you have Ubuntu, the gnome-format package is already in the universe repository (Jaunty), so all you have to do is:

sudo apt-get install gnome-format

Safely Remove External Media in Linux with Ejecter

Ejecter is a small but very useful utility to safely, easily remove external media. A simple menu that sits in the system notification area, providing you a quick way to unmount external peripherals such as usb pendrives, cd/dvd, external hard disks and so.

To install Ejecter in Ubuntu Jaunty, open a terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install ejecter

For Ubuntu Hardy and Intrepid, download it from here.

You can also install it in any other Linux distro by downloading the source files.

Use Twitter in Pidgin [Downloads for Windows, Ubuntu and Source Files]

We already covered one way to use Twitter in Pidgin but here’s another way.

Pidgin-Twitter is a Pidgin plugin which supports Twitter, Wassr, identi.ca and jisko.

Among it’s general features are: the display of the user’s image, translate sender’s name and @<username> to link to the user’s home, play sounds for specific senders/recipients, show letter counter on the format toolbar and filter messages from specified users.

Download the latest version:

-source files
-Windows binaries
-Ubuntu .DEB file (unfortunately, the latest version does not have a .DEB file)

10 Useful Linux / Unix Commands

1. Show installed but unused linux headers, image, or modules:

dpkg -l 'linux-*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/;/[0-9]/!d'

If you would also like to purge them too:

dpkg -l 'linux-*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/;/[0-9]/!d' | xargs sudo apt-get -y purge

2. Rip audio from a video file:

mplayer -ao pcm -vo null -vc dummy -dumpaudio -dumpfile <output-file> <input-file>

You can also extract the sound from a flv and make an mp3 with:

ffmpeg -i input.flv -f mp3 -vn -acodec copy ouput.mp3

3. Stream YouTube URL directly to mplayer:

mplayer -fs $(echo "http://youtube.com/get_video.php?$(curl -s $youtube_url | sed -n "/watch_fullscreen/s;.*\(video_id.\+\)&title.*;\1;p")")

(Replace $youtube_url with any youtube URL)

4. Download all images from a site:

wget -r -l1 --no-parent -nH -nd -P/tmp -A".gif,.jpg" http://example.com/images

5. Create a nifty overview of the hardware in your computer:

lshw -html > hardware.html

(then open hardware.html in a web browser).

6. Cut a part of a video:

ffmpeg -vcodec copy -acodec copy -i orginalfile -ss 00:01:30 -t 0:0:20 newfile

Where 00:01:30 is the start time (replace with your own) and 0:0:20 is the length of the video you want to cut out (replace with the length you desire).

7. Purge configuration files of removed packages on debian based systems:

sudo aptitude purge `dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | awk '{print $1}'`

8. Play high-res video files on a slow processor:

mplayer -framedrop -vfm ffmpeg -lavdopts lowres=1:fast:skiploopfilter=all

9. Convert images to a multi-page pdf:

convert -adjoin -page A4 *.jpeg multipage.pdf

10. Find the 20 biggest directories on the current filesystem:

du -xk | sort -n | tail -20

Multi-Platform Local and Friend-Based Remote Backups with CrashPlan

CrashPlan is a freeware handy backup tool that facilitates local and friend-based remote backups which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

CrashPlan can back up to multiple locations including local disks, networked disks, remote server space you have access to, your friends’ remote computers, and similar to Mozy and Carbonite, to CrashPlan’s remote backup servers if you subscribe to their service.

Assuming you have a remote location (a personal web server, friend’s computer, or work computer) you can use as your backup location you’ll be in business. Your remote data is encrypted so you don’t have to worry about your friend discovering something you may want to keep confidential.

The setup and user interface for CrashPlan are straight forward, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting things up and running. Most people won’t find that they need the additional perks that come with an upgrade to the premium service, which makes CrashPlan an appealingly free option for personal backup.

Linux, the First OS to Support USB 3.0 ! wow

Linux is the first operating system to offer support for USB 3.0 devices, as can be read on The Geekess blog. If all goes according to plan, Linux will support USB 3.0 in September 2009. The development of this driver has taken a year and a half and the source is available on this page.

USB 3.0, whose specifications were published about seven months ago, promises, among other features: transfer rates of up to 5 Gbps and a new interface called xHCI developed by Intel.

Mac4Lin 1.0 Final Available for Download

Mac4Lin is a complete UI for GTK based desktops that uses a script which takes care of absolutely everything needed to make Gnome or Xfce look like Mac. The dock, the GTK theme, Emerald theme (window borders), new icons, new wallpapers, taskbar image, GDM themes, cursors, themes for Pidgin, Firefox, several players and even the system sounds will seem to be like running a Mac.

I persoally don’t really understand the need for this as Linux is Linux… not Mac, but anyway, some people might be interested in this so here you go:

Download Mac4Lin 1.0 final

Full list of changes:

* Fully supports GNOME 2.26 and backwards compatible
* Improved support for GlobalMenu, support integrated in the default GTK theme
* Better native Xfce support
* Icon additions
* Statusbar is now fixed
* New progress bars
* New tabs
* Improved installation and uninstallation scripts
* Integrates well with Globus
* Finer UI refinements
* Metacity theme now supports different button sizes
* Firefox 3 themes are now updated
* Songbird plugins included
* Pidgin AWN 64bit plugin now included
* Fonts are now consolidated
* Transparent top panel
* GDM theme is now in-line with Mac OS X login window
* Cairo dock is the default recommended dock

Project blog

Review of the Last.fm Open-Source Client for Linux !!

Last.fm is an open-source application licensed under the GPL, allowing you to listen to Last.fm radio stations and submit the songs in the same time. For those of you unfamiliar with Last.fm, it’s a great social music community, allowing you to submit songs you currently listen to, statistics, forums for bands or music styles (or even more: Amarok has a group, most major distributions also, and you can start your own group about anything, match people and discuss), together with information for each artist, open for anyone to edit, just like the Wikipedia style.

The application is also included in Debian’s repositories (and probably most other distributions), and it can be downloaded alternately from the Tools page on Last.fm. What I liked is that they also offer an online Debian repository for it here, although I recommend using the official package in Debian’s repositories. But if you want the latest version, the repositories they provide are fine.

Main interface after logging in

The client is built using the Qt 4.3.4 libraries since April 2, 2008, so the integration with KDE 4.x should be just fine. You will also need a Last.fm account in order to use it.

Features
The left tab contains most of the important links for the Last.fm radio, like recently played, loved or banned songs, tags, friends, neighbours or history. You can love, ban or skip songs (but unfortunately I couldn’t find any ‘pause’ button). You can also start your own radio station and add favourite songs there.

Listening to radio

It integrates with the system tray, and it’s available in several languages, like English, French or Italian.

It also offers several configuration options, like the audio engine or the icon in the system tray.

Configuration

As a conclusion, the Last.fm client can prove very useful for persons who like to listen to internet radio a lot, unless you prefer to do it in your own audio player of choice. Overall, another nice free application for our delight, and these projects should really be encouraged and supported.

How_To: Manipulate Audio Files Using CLI Tools in Debian Or (ubuntu)

Note: This how-to may also work in Ubuntu and other Debian-based distributions.

This is a tutorial about using CLI (Command Line Interface) tools in Ubuntu and Debian to manipulate, encode and decode various audio formats, like FLAC or OGG Vorbis. It describes the packages needed to install, and some basic commands for converting audio files and working with CUE and FLAC files.The commands in this tutorial were tested in Kubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon and Debian Lenny, with all the updates to date.

Command line tools such as oggenc or flac can be used for example to convert FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) files or WAV (WaveForm Audio Format) in OGG Vorbis files. Vorbis is a free audio codec offering lossy compression, and is known to have a smaller size and better quality (at least for lower bitrates) than the widely used MP3.

All the tools used in this tutorial are available through four packages, and to install them issue the following command as root (Ubuntu users must precede it with sudo, since the root account is disabled by default in Ubuntu):

apt-get install flac vorbis-tools cuetools shntool

These packages contain several programs and utilities for manipulating audio files. To convert a FLAC file into WAV do a:

flac -d file.flac

If there are several FLAC files in the same directory, use the command:

flac -d *.flac

And all the files with the .flac extension will be converted. Of course, one can include many more options, like the name of the output file. Do a man flac or a flac –help command to see detailed help and a list of options. To convert either WAV or FLAC files into OGG, execute one of the following commands:

oggenc -b 192 *.wav
oggenc -b 192 *.flac

The -b option refers to the bitrate of the resulting OGG file, in this case the average bitrate being 192 kbps. Or you can choose to use the quality option:

oggenc -q 6 *.flac

The quality is represented on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest. More details on the official website. Some albums may come as a single FLAC file and a CUE file which stores the information needed to split the former. In this case the programs cuebreakpoints and shnsplit come in handy:

cuebreakpoints album_name.cue | shnsplit album_name.flac

And the same goes with the WAV:

cuebreakpoints album_name.cue | shnsplit album_name.wav

It will result in several .flac or .wav files, split according to the lengths specified in the CUE file. You can also edit the CUE file with a text editor and change the split lengths, for concatenating two melodies or more in a single one.

Once you obtained the desired OGG Vorbis files, you may want to edit or remove their tags. To clear all the tags in an OGG Vorbis file, use the vorbiscomment tool. For example:

touch file
vorbiscomment -w song.ogg -c file

The first command will create an empty file (if it doesn’t already exist). The second one will edit the tags in song.ogg with the info found in file, which is none. Here is a script to remove all the tags from all Vorbis files with OGG extensions in a directory:

#!/bin/bash

echo “OGG Tag Remover”
echo “Creating empty file…”
touch file

echo “Removing all tags in OGG files…”
for i in *.ogg; do
echo “Executing command ‘vorbiscomment -w \”$i\” -c file’…”
nice -n 15 vorbiscomment -w “$i” -c file
done

echo “Removing empty file…”
rm file

echo “Done! All tags removed.”

Copy this into a file of your choice, say vorbis_rm.bash, make it executable and then run it:

chmod 755 vorbis_rm.bash
./vorbis_rm.bash

All the tags in OGG files will be removed. This is useful when you have large albums and you want to clear some wrong edited tags in one command and start clear.

Some audio players like Amarok offer an easy tag editing system. However, to make your work even faster, you can use various Bash scripts which edit as much as is needed to just leave only fields like TITLE unfilled. Next is an example of a script which automatically fills the TRACKNUMBER field for each OGG file in a directory:

#!/bin/bash

echo “OGG TRACKNUMBER Edit”

n=1
for i in *.ogg; do
echo “Executing command ‘vorbiscomment -a \”$i\” -t \”TRACKNUMBER=$n\”‘”…
nice -n 15 vorbiscomment -a “$i” -t “TRACKNUMBER=$n”
n=$((n + 1))
done

echo “Done. TRACKNUMBER tags completed.”

After running this script in a directory with OGG files, all of them will have the TRACKNUMBER field completed.