Try Firefox 3.5 (pre), with in-built video support (+subtitles)
You can try out Firefox 3.5 (not final yet) now and have a sneak preview of the new features.
Among the new features is the in-built support for video (there is a new video tag you can add to your (X)HTML pages)).
With some extra Javascript, it is possible to top up the video playback with subtitles, in your language!
1. Therefore, grab a copy of Firefox 3.5 (pre).
2. When you run it, it is advised to run it as
./firefox -ProfileManager -no-remote
This asks you to select a different profile, so you can create a special profile just for testing Firefox 3.5. The -no-remote option helps you to have independent Firefox sessions from your normal Firefox you may be running.
3. Visit the Firefox 3.5 video demonstration page with subtitles.
4. Here is a version with translated subtitles for Greek.
Note that Firefox supports the OGV video container format. Therefore, you may need to convert your videos to OGV.
Create flash videos of your desktop with recordmydesktop
John Varouhakis is the author of recordmydesktop and gtk-recordmydesktop (front-end) which is a tool to help you record a session on your Linux desktop and save it to a Flash video (.flv).
To install, click on System/Administration/Synaptic Package Manager, and search for gtk-recordmydesktop. Install it. Then, the application is available from Applications/Sound&Video/gtkRecordMyDesktop.
Before you are ready to capture your Flash video, you need to select the video area. There are several ways to do this; the most common is to click on Select Window, then click on the Window you want to record. A common mistake is that people try to select the window from the preview above. If you do that, when you would have selected the recorder itself to make a video of, which is not really useful. You need to click on the real window in order to select it; then, in the desktop preview you can see the selected window. In the above case, I selected the OpenOffice Writer window.
Assuming that you do not need to do any further customisation, you can simple press Record to start recording. Generally, it is good to check the recording settings using the GNOME Sound recorder beforehand. While recording, you can notice a special icon on the top panel. This is gtk-recordmydesktop. Once you press it, recording stops and the program will do the post-processing of the recording. The resulting file goes into your home folder, and has the extension .ogv.
Some common pitfalls include
- I did not manage to get audio recording to work well for my system; I had to disable libasound so that the audio recording would not skip. With ALSA, sound skips while with OSS emulation it does not. Weird. Does it work for you?
- The post-processing of the recording takes some time. If you have a long recording, it may take some time to show that it makes progress, so you might think it crashed. Have patience.
I had made one such recording, which can be found at the Greek OLPC mailing list. John told me that the audio part of the video was not loud enough, and one can use extra post-processing to make it sound better. For example, one could extract the audio stream of the video, remove the noise, beautify (how?) and then add back to the video.
It’s good to try out gtk-recordmydesktop, even for a small recording. Do you have some cool tips from your Linux desktop that you want to share? Record your desktop!
ert-archives.gr: “Linux/Unix operating systems are not supported”
ERT (Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation) is the national radio/television organisation of Greece.
ERT recently made available online part of its audio and video archive, at the website http://www.ert-archives.gr/
When browsing the website from Linux, you were blocked with a message that Linux/Unix operating systems are not supported. This message was appearing due to User-Agent filtering. Even if you altered your User-Agent, the page would not show the multimedia.
There has been a heated discussion on this on local mailing lists, with many users sending their personal polite comments to the feedback page at the ERT website. Many individual, personal comments have value and are taken into account.
Since today, http://www.ert-archives.gr/ does no do filtering on the User-Agent, and has changed the wording at the support page saying that
Σχετικά με υπολογιστές που χρησιμοποιούν λειτουργικό σύστημα Linux σχετικές οδηγίες θα υπάρξουν στο άμεσο μέλλον.
which means that they will be providing instructions for Linux systems in the immediate future.
Going through the HTML code of http://www.ert-archives.gr/ one can see that the whole system would work well under Linux, out of the box, if they could change
<embed id=”oMP” name=”oMP” width=”800″ height=”430″ type=”application/x-ms-wmp“
to
<embed id=”oMP” name=”oMP” width=”800″ height=”430″ type=”video/x-ms-wmp“
Firefox, with the mplayerplugin, supports the video/x-ms-wmp streaming format. You can verify if you have it by writing about:plugins in the location bar and pressing Enter. For my system it says
Windows Media Player Plugin
- File name: mplayerplug-in-wmp.so
- mplayerplug-in 3.40Video Player Plug-in for QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player streams using MPlayer
JavaScript Enabled and Using GTK2 Widgets - …
-
MIME Type Description Suffixes Enabled video/x-ms-wmp Windows Media wmp,* Yes
I am not sure if the mplayerplugin package is installed by default in Ubuntu, and I do not know what is the workflow from the message that says that a plugin is missing to the process of getting it installed. If you use the Totem Media Player, it instructs you to download and install the missing packages. I would appreciate your input on this one.
A workaround is to write a Greasemonkey script to replace the string so that Firefox works out of the box. However, the proper solution is to have ERT fix the code.
I must say that I would have preferred to have Totem Movie Player used to view those videos.
I just finished watching a documentary from the 80s about ecology and sustainability of the forests on my Linux system. It is amazing to listen again to the voice-over which is sort of a signature voice for such documentaries of the said TV channel. The screenshot shows goats in a forest, and mentioning the devastating effects of said animals on recently-burnt forests.
Update (22Mar08): The problem has not been resolved yet. Dimitris Diamantis offers a work-around at the Ubuntu-gr mailing list.
Οδηγοί βίντεο για εγκατάσταση/χρήση Ubuntu Linux
Πριν από μερικές μέρες, ο Sergios Tsabolov έφτιαξε μια σειρά από οδηγούς στα ελληνικά, σε μορφή βίντεο για την εγκατάσταση και χρήση του Ubuntu Linux. Τα βίντεο αυτά είναι μορφής screencast και ενσωματώνουν και φωνή· περιγραφή της διαδικασίας από τον ίδιο το Σέργιο. Το φορμά (format) των αρχείων είναι OGG οπότε χρειάζεστε μια εφαρμογή όπως Εφαρμογές/Ήχος και Εικόνα/Movie Player (Ubuntu) ή VLC για την αναπαραγωγή.
Είδα τα βίντεο και πρέπει να πω ότι πιστεύω ότι θα βοηθήσουν πάρα πολύ τους νέους χρήστες, στο κομμάτι τις εγκατάστασης της διανομής αλλά και στη βασική χρήση.
Ακολουθεί η ανακοίνωση του Σέργιου στη λίστα συνδρομητών ubuntu-gr,
Καλησπέρα .
Έχω ανεβάσει και το τέταρτο μέρος είναι λίγο μεγαλύτερο αλλά έγινε μεγάλο επειδή εδώ έπρεπε να αναφέρω αρκετά πράγματα για εγκατάσταση προγραμμάτων και τρόποι εγκατάστασης τους.
Ζητάω από τώρα να με συγχωρήσετε αν έχω πει κάτι παραπάνω , εξάλλου τα video θα είναι χρήσιμα για νέους χρηστές εμπειρότεροι χρήστες ξέρουν τα περισσότερα από αυτά , στο 3 μέρος δεν έχω κάνει κάτι σημαντικό απλός έκανα ενημέρωση και κάποιες βασικές ρυθμίσεις για καλύτερη λειτουργία.Τα αρχεία μπορείτε να δείτε online εδώ :
http://econlab.uom.gr/econlab/ubuntu/video/UbuntuEdgy6.10.1.ogg
http://econlab.uom.gr/econlab/ubuntu/video/UbuntuEdgy6.10.2.ogg
http://econlab.uom.gr/econlab/ubuntu/video/UbuntuEdgy6.10.3.ogg
http://econlab.uom.gr/econlab/ubuntu/video/UbuntuEdgy6.10.4.ogg
Σύντομα θα προχωρήσω και στο 7.04 με παρόμοιο τρόπο.
Ευχαριστώ εκ τον προτέρων.
Connecting to Bluetooth devices between Linux and Windows
A common issue that arises when you connect your laptop to your Bluetooth device (such as mobile phone), is that the device forges a unique authentication with the Bluetooth stack of the operating system. What that means is that if I pair my laptop with my phone in Linux, the pairing works only in Linux. When I boot in Windows, I have to remove the pairing from the phone and establish it again in Windows. Then, when I connect to Linux I need to remove the pairing and establish it again, and so on.
The reason for this problem is that we use a single USB device (whether a dongle or module) that has a single MAC address. The mobile phone differentiates between pairings based on the MAC address.
Therefore, how can we solve this issue? A search with Google shows that it is a known issue with no answer yet. There are two avenues to fix this problem;
- get the Linux bluetooth stack to change the MAC address so that a second pairing will be possible. I am not sure if it is possible as some of the security functions probably take place on the Bluetooth hardware. Currently hciconfig does not offer an option similar to ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55.
- find the authentication data of the pairing on Windows and convert to the format that the Linux stack understands and accepts. In this way, a single pairing will work for both operating systes.
I do not have a solution yet. If someone can looking into these it would be great!
Re: 11 Things You Haven’t Seen Yet in Ubuntu Feisty Fawn
Άρθρο του John Reese για τις βελτιώσεις του Ubuntu.
Από τα πιο σημαντικά:
1. Θα δουλεύει το 3D όπως είναι διαθέσιμο από τη διανομή Fedora Core 6. Δηλαδή θα είναι μια επιλογή στις Προτιμήσεις με το όνομα Desktop Effects. Ελπίζω να το μεταφράσαμε 
Αν έχετε κάρτα γραφικών Intel, τότε το 3D desktop θα δουλεύει άμεσα, δίχως ανάγκη εγκατάστασης άλλου λογισμικού.
Το 3D desktop δεν βασίζεται στο Beryl αλλά στο Compiz, window managers. Ποιο είναι πιο καλό; Το Compiz φαίνεται να είναι αυτό που έχει όλο τον αρχικό κώδικα ενώ το Beryl έχει κάνει τρομερή δουλειά στο marketing και στις μικρορυθμίσεις/plugins. Σε κάθε περίπτωση τα δύο έργα ανακοίνωσαν ότι θα συγχωνευτούν και φαίνεται να οδεύουν στην κατεύθυνση αυτή.
2. Οι ρυθμίσεις δικτύου θα δουλεύουν καλύτερα και με αυτοματοποιημένο τρόπο, με χρήση του NetworkManager. Υπήρξαν κάποιες συζητήσεις για προβλήματα με το NetworkManager, ελπίζω να λυθούν σύντομα.
3. Δυνατότητα να δει κάποιος τους οδηγούς συσκευών κλειστού λογισμικού που χρησιμοποιεί. Τεχνολογικά είναι εύκολο να γραφτεί το πρόγραμμα αυτό, ουσιαστικά προσφέρει τη δυνατότητα να διαχωρίσει τα μηχανήματα που δουλεύουν πάνω σε πραγματικά ελεύθερο λογισμικό και σε όσα δεν.
Multimedia support in Ubuntu Linux 6.10
This is a follow-up to the article Multimedia support in Ubuntu Linux 6.06 on how to add extended multimedia support to the Ubuntu Linux distribution.
The new version of Ubuntu Linux, 7.04, has a new functionality to help add multimedia support in a seamless way; when you try to play a media file that requires a new codec, you will be asked to install it at that time. The new functionality was made available thanks to the work on the gstreamer multimedia library (bug #161922 – script to provide plugin installation info), and work with the Ubuntu distribution. It is important to note that the new version of Fedora Linux 7 has a similar mechanism of automatic multimedia support installation.
In Ubuntu 6.10, start System/Administration/Synaptic Package Manager. Under Settings/Repositories, select the universe and multiverse repositories. Click ok, then Reload to update your package cache.
Subsequently, click on Search and type in
gstreamer-0.10
You will get quite a few results; you can install packages found apart from those which names end with -dev (development packages, not normally required) and -dbg (debug packages, not normally required).
Finally, the w32codecs package (do a new search for this) adds support to other binary codecs that no native Linux software exists yet.
Video playback problems (black) after installing Beryl (or Compiz)
Note: Here we describe a workaround. The proper solution is to fix the graphics drivers and the X.Org X server. Such work is taking place, and for several cases you do not need this workaround. Especially with newer versions of Linux.
You just installed your 3D Linux desktop and you are really enthusiastic about it. But when you try to play some videos, you get a strange black output. What’s going on?
The common software video players that come with the Linux desktop are able to display the video stream to several types of output devices. This includes several types of output for the graphical interface, and also obscure output devices such as text mode, using ASCII characters.
The default output device is XVideo (or Xv) for players such as those based on GStreamer (totem) and VLC.
As you guessed, there is a bug with XVideo when using Beryl/Compiz. Therefore, to fix, you need to switch to another output device that works.
For GStreamer players (such as totem, the default movie player in GNOME, Ubuntu and so on), you need to run from the command line the command
gstreamer-properties
(with older distributions such as Ubuntu 6.06 there is an option in System/Preferences for this).
and pick
Video, then for Default Video Plugin choose X Window System (No Xv). Click on test to verify that it actually works. Click Close and you are set.
VLC is not installed by default in Ubuntu 6.10. You need to install manually using the Synaptic Package Manager (under System/Administration), once you have activated the Universe repository in Repositories.
Start VLC and click on Settings, then Preferences. Expand Video and then expand Output modules. You will notice several options for output device. How do we actually choose which one should be the active output device? Well, it appears it’s a bit tricky. Select the item Output modules, and notice the checkbox at the bottom right that says Advanced options. Check the box, and now you have the option to select a different output device. Pick X11 video output, click on Save and you are set!
Update (17 Jun 2007): Added section at UbuntuGuide.org, How do I fix black windows during video playback.
International Call for Artists’ film and video
AT HOME IN EUROPE
Generous European Culture2000 funding enables ISIS Arts (UK) and it’s
international project partners BEK (Norway), InterSpace (Bulgaria) and
RIXC (Latvia) to curate a NEW SCREENING PROGRAMME around the theme of
European Identity for the Big M, ISIS Art’s inflatable touring space.
Daily, more and more European people decide to live in other European
countries. With a shifting concept of nationality it becomes
increasingly important to consider what it means to be European. Is
there such a thing as European Identity and how does it relate to
national identity?
For this programme we invite submissions of films or video works on this
theme from artists of any nationality.
Selected works will become part of the new screening programme which
will tour to the four partnering countries between May 2007 and
September 2007.
Work will be selected through open submission. In order to be considered
individual works must:
- Have a running time of 5 minutes or less
- Be single channel and non interactive
- Address the project theme
Selected artists will receive an exhibition fee of € 300 (The Big M is
not a commercial venture and admission is free). Copyright remains
solely with the artist.
The Big M is a highly stylised inflatable structure that functions as a
temporary and mobile venue for the presentation of video and digital
media. Unique in both design and function, the Big M provides an
alternative to the conventional gallery setting and exhibits work by
emerging and established artists to diverse audiences.
See: http://www.isisarts.org.uk/index2.html
To submit pieces for consideration please send work on DVD, CD Rom (720x
576 dpi QuickTime movie) or mini DV, titled and with a synopsis of 50
words maximum, a CV and a stamped addressed envelope (if you want your
materials returned) to:
BEK
C Sundtsg 55
9. etage
5004 Bergen
Norway
Deadline for receipt of submissions is the 3rd of February 2007
Further inquiries to isis at isisarts dot org dot uk
Further project information can be found on
http://www.athomeineurope.eu/
Multimedia support in Ubuntu Linux 6.06
With Ubuntu Linux 6.06, it is much clear how to install those codecs in order to get broad multimedia file support.
In Ubuntu, the multimedia infrastructure is handled by GStreamer; you install GStreamer plugins and any application that uses GStreamer can immediately benefit from the new codec support.
A typical installation of Ubuntu will bring in the free and open-source codecs by default. This includes the base gstreamer plugins package, gstreamer0.10-plugins-base that covers
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstadder.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstaudioconvert.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstaudiorate.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstaudioresample.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstaudiotestsrc.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcdparanoia.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdecodebin.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstffmpegcolorspace.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstogg.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstplaybin.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstsubparse.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttcp.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttheora.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttypefindfunctions.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideo4linux.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideorate.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoscale.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideotestsrc.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvolume.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvorbis.so
With a properly encoded multimedia file, you can play music or video with subtitles. Such good codecs are Ogg, Vorbis and Theora. You can also rip CDs; cdparanoia is also there.
By default you also get the good package, gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
It contains
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgst1394.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstaasink.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstalaw.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstalpha.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstapetag.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstavi.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstautodetect.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcacasink.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcdio.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsteffectv.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgoom.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstid3demux.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstlevel.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstefence.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmulaw.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstossaudio.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstrtp.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstrtsp.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstsmpte.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttaglib.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstudp.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideobox.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoflip.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstwavenc.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstwavparse.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstauparse.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdebug.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstnavigationtest.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstalphacolor.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcairo.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstflxdec.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmatroska.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideomixer.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcutter.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmultipart.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstflac.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstjpeg.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstpng.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstspeex.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgconfelements.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstshout2.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideobalance.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsticydemux.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstximagesrc.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstannodex.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgdkpixbuf.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsthalelements.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdv.so
This includes generic AVI support, access to digital video and Firewire devices, visualisers, the Matroska codec, access to shoutcast servers, the speex audio codec, the flac codec and many more.
At this point, you can install Pitivi, a gstreamer-enabled video editor written in Python that helps you create your own movie. Make sure you install gstreamer0.10-gnonlin which enables non-linear editing in gstreamer.
Up to here you got free and open-source software.
You can continue with more codecs by installing the package gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly. This package is not part of the official Ubuntu distribution; you need to enable the Universe repository. Use System/Administration/Synaptic Package Manager to install these additional packages.
Ugly are the plugins and codecs that may have distribution problems in some countries.
Ugly includes
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsta52dec.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstasf.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdvdlpcmdec.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdvdread.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdvdsub.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstiec958.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmad.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmpeg2dec.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmpegaudioparse.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmpegstream.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstrmdemux.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstsid.so
This package will bring in, among others, DVD playback and subtitle support, ASF file support, MP3 support (MAD package) and MPEG2 video playback.
You can also get MP3 support if you install the gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 plugin which is available from Universe as well. This package is probably free to use in any country thanks to the efforts of the Fluendo team.
It appears that if you install ugly, it is good to install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg so that you get support for
FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer
This GStreamer plugin supports a large number of audio and video compression
formats through the use of the FFmpeg library. The plugin contains GStreamer
elements for encoding 40+ formats (MPEG, DivX, MPEG4, AC3, DV, …), decoding
90+ formats (AVI, MPEG, OGG, Matroska, ASF, …), demuxing 30+ formats, and
colorspace conversion.
Finally, there is a package gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad with plugins of potentially suboptimal quality. It includes
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstbz2.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcdxaparse.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdtsdec.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstfreeze.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgsm.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmms.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmodplug.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmusepack.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstqtdemux.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttrm.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstspeed.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstswfdec.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttta.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideo4linux2.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstwavpack.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstxingheader.so
- /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstneonhttpsrc.so
With bad you get GSM audio codec support, MMS support, QT playback support for some formats, Flash (SWF) playing support, Video4Linux2 support, MUSEPACK support and a few more.
