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Click Here to Creat a DVD Movie of Your Home Videos They'll Watch.
Import Mail and Address Book From Evolution to Thunderbird
Set Preferred Applications
Default Applications are programs that run when you click to open a file, like your music player when you click on a mp3 file.
Even though I use KDE desktop manager I still like to use Nautilus, Evolution and Firefox. These are Gnome programs. To set
preferred apps in KDE go to System-configuration-KDE-components-File Associations. If its a Gnome program, in a console as
root type gnome-control-center then click on advanced and go into preferred applications.
Convert WMA Files to MP3
I sometimes I buy music online. These downloads are sometimes in WMA format. This limits their use on Linux systems and linux
based software as well as Ipods I'm told. To use these music files in my home DVD movies, which is akin to burning them to
a audio CD that is recognized as my free use, I have to convert them to MP3 format. There may be better ways out there, but
In windows I burn them to an audio disk and then in linux rip them back to mp3 or ogg using Grip. I don't think you can rip
back to anything but WMA using windows' Media Player. That's their propietary format and your only choice. They certainly
are trying to make their formats the industry standard which will further solidify their monopoly.
Checking and Turning On DMA
Is DMA turned on for your IDE device? To check whether DMA is currently active, enter the following command (substitute
/dev/hda with your disk drive device):
# hdparm -v /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
multcount = 0 (off)
I/O
support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
nowerr = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 7297/255/63, sectors = 117231408, start = 0
Check
the using_dma line. If it is not on then turn on IDE DMA with thiscommand, but read the hdparm manpages before doing so:
#
hdparm -d1 /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
Convert Case and Remove Spaces in File Names in Batch
I found this on another website.
To convert multiple file names all at once from uppercase to lower case or vise
versa. Edit the command for your extension as necessary.
for i in *.[Mm][Pp]3; do mv "$i" `echo $i | tr '[A-Z]'
'[a-z]'`; done
for i in *.[mM][pP]3; do mv "$i" `echo $i | tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'`; done
for i in *.[Jj][Pp][Gg]; do mv
"$i" `echo $i | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`; done
for i in *.[jJ][pP][gG]; do mv "$i" `echo $i | tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'`; done
To convert just extensions:
for i in *.MP3; do mv "$i" "`basename "$i" .MP3`.mp3"; done
If
any filenames contain spaces, first convert them to underscores:
for i in *.mp3; do mv "$i" `echo $i | tr
' ' '_'`; done
for i in *.MP3; do mv "$i" `echo $i | tr ' ' '_'`; done
for i in *.jpg; do mv "$i" `echo $i | tr '
' '_'`; done
for i in *.JPG; do mv "$i" `echo $i | tr ' ' '_'`; done
Convert Any Movie File to a Compact Windows AVI
Works any file Mplayer can play.
mencoder clip.mov -vf scale=640:480 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4v2:vhq -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=64 -srate
48000 -o clip.avi
Once I recorded a movie sideways and had to rotate it. Remember that order of commands is important and the scale may be
important, so rotate it and then scale it.
mencoder clip.mov -vf rotate=1, scale=640:480 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4v2:vhq -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=64
-srate 48000 -o clip.avi
Rotate=1 is clockwise, 2 is counterclockwise etc. see the mencoder man pages.
Convert a Home Movie to iPod Video Format
This mencoder command produces good results if you want to have your home movie DVDs on your video iPod. Works for just
about any format video.
ffmpeg -y -i movie.vob -vcodec xvid -s 320x240 -r 29.97 -b 1500 -acodec aac -ac 2 -ar
24000 -ab 64 movie.mp4
Do You Use LVE to Edit Your Videos?
LVE is a great video editor. It alows you to splice different videos together and edit out the bad parts; it even recognizes
VOB files. The GUI is pretty easy to use, but there is no way on the GUI to save your edits to a final mpeg. Instead you must
save your project as .lst and .prj files then use one of the various command line utilities provided to put your edits
all together.
After I have edit my video and saved the .prj file here are two commands I use to make a mpeg file from my efforts:
lvedump -e -i myvideo.prj -av myoutputs
This command will create myoutputs.m2v and myoutputs.mpa that will allow for further edit to the audio before
you recombine them using mplex.
lvedump -m -i myvideo.prj -av mympeg.mpg
This command will create an mpeg2 file with your edits and the original audio.
Import Microsoft Outlook Contacts Into Evolution.
I found this elsewhere on the web. It is the only way I have found to do this as Evolution's import capability is limited.
Having trouble migrating your address book from Outlook to Evolution? I did. I had a lot of contacts in Outlook, but I
was unable to export these because the Import/Export engine was not installed, and the CD was not to be found. So, then what?
I searched around online, looking for utilities to convert file formats like pst to something Evolution could understand,
but with no luck. I forwarded all my contacts as attachments in an email, but Evolution doesn't have the functionality to
open/save/import many attachments (or files) at once. And here's me thinking things were supposed to be easier with computers
in the 21st century...
Here's a short recipe of how I moved my address book. Beware, your success with these instructions may vary, but it seemed
to work well enough for me.
Open your Contacts page in Outlook, and hit Ctrl-A to select all of them.
* Select Actions -> Forward as vCard.
* Send this mail (which has lots of attachments) to an account accessible from Evolution.
* Open the mail in Evolution, and save it to a file (File -> Save As...). The file name is not important, but
I will assume the filename is "mail".
* Run a command like this:
* cat mail | perl -ne 'chomp; if ($_ eq "BEGIN:VCARD") { $p=1; }; print $_,"\n" if $p; if ($_
eq "END:VCARD") { $p = 0; }' > vcards.vcf
In Evolution, go to File -> Import, select single file, choose vcards.vcf, select vCard file format, and hey presto,
all your contacts should be imported into your Evolution address book.
*
If you know a better way to do this, feel free to let me know.
(C) 2004, Ketil Froyn
http://ketil.froyn.name/outlook_evolution.html
Mkisofs/Growisofs Command For DVD Videos
mkisofs -dvd-video -udf -o /path/dvd.iso /path/directory/containing/video_ts/
growisofs
-Z /dev/dvd -dvd-video /path/directory/containing/video_ts/
The mkisofs command will create an iso file called
dvd.iso. The growisofs command will not write an iso file to the DVD but will write the contents of an iso it temporarily
creates (for lack of a better explanation) to the DVD.
Here is a simple way to shrink and backup a home video.
Great for use with the new mini DVD camcorders. I've created hours of home video on one DVD by combining VOB files using:
cat one.vob two.vob three.vob > video.vob
Then substituting video.vob for dvd:// below.
It works on commercial DVD's with multiple languages, too, but don't illegally copy movies the rights to which you
don't own. There is still some debate under fair use laws whether you can backup movies you have bought in anticipation of
a future potential loss. Seek legal advice.
In an xterm window create a new directory and go there. If you already have a DVD9 put it into your
drive and initiate the commands below. If you have a VOB file larger than 4.7 gig, or, if you have mini DVDs, copy the
VOB files to the directory you just created and precede the instructions below with those above.
Run the appropriate commands:
mplayer -alang en -dumpaudio -dumpfile video.ac3 dvd://
If more than one language is available add -alang switch.
mplayer -dumpvideo
-dumpfile video.m2v dvd://
tcrequant -i video.m2v -o shrunk.m2v -f 1.5
-f 1.5 is the shrink factor where 1=100%, 2=50% of original size, so, .1 increments by 5% where 1.5=75% 1.4=80% 1.3=85%.
Two hours of video will probably need to be shrunk 80%; 1.5 hours probably none at all. Note: The final.mpg is bigger than
the sum of its audio and video components.
mplex -f 8 -o final.mpg video.ac3 video.m2v
or
mplex -f 8 -o final.mpg video.ac3 shrunk.m2v
See "Solutions to common Errors" below.
It seems like every time I shrink a movie it delays the audio by 2 seconds. To fix:
mplex -f 8 -O -2000ms -o final.mpg video.ac3 shrunk.m2v
To make a DVD that will play in your DVD player create a text file as below and save as video.xml
<dvdauthor>
<vmgm />
<titleset>
<titles>
<audio lang="en"/>
<pgc>
<vob file="final.mpg" />
</pgc>
</titles>
</titleset>
</dvdauthor>
Run the command:
dvdauthor -o DVD -x video.xml (A DVD directory will be created)
Put a dvd into burner and run the command below using your device and path
growisofs -Z /dev/dvd1
-dvd-video DVD
Soulutions to Common Errors
You
might get an error with mplex indicating the lack of a %d in the command. If this is the case use final.mpg%d. This necessity
means the command wants to make more than one final.mpg and it wants to add a 1,2,3 ... behind each file name to separate
them. I had this happen recently. Three final.mpg files resulted, but final.mpg1 only lasted a second when played. Final.mpg2
was the movie and the third was the movie' s second half. You can concatenate them with the cat command creating
a final.avi, but you then have to rebuild the mpeg using the mencoder command below. I tried again from the start. The second
time I got no %d error but the mplex command ended early indicating it ran out of audio before the video. If you don't have
to shrink the video you can capture the whole thing with the command:
mplayer
-dumpstream -dumpfile final.avi dvd://
This
dumped the video to a file called final.avi. The file could have been .vob or .mpg; it doesn't make any difference. After
that I ran the mencoder command:
mencoder
-oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd -vf scale=720:480,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts
vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:keyint=18:acodec=ac3:
abitrate=192:aspect=16/9
-ofps 30000/1001 -o final.mpg final.avi
That
creates a DVD compatible mpeg file. I think I have the spaces right, but, remember, there is a space before and after any
word etc. that is preceded by a dash. I then finished up with the video.xml and dvdauthor commands etc..
this
worked out good and got the entire video.
Had
the video needed shrinking I guess I could have run the mplayer dumpaudio and dumpvideo commands (without the alang switch)
as above, but I never tried.
Investigating
the final.avi using "tcprobe -i final.avi" revealed the audio stream switched bitrate a number of times during the video which
may have been the initial problem.
On a
side note I am reminded of a problem I had earlier with a Sony Pictures DVD. My kid's Chronicles of Gnarly DVD wouldn't play
so I cleaned it and to test it I put it in my Linux box. It caused the whole PC to lock up, but it played fine again on the
TV player.
Turns
out those buggers at Sony want to rule the world like Microsoft.
They
are another large conglomerate that needs to be broken up, but I digress. It seems they inserted a blank frame or something
now and again to foil a player like Mplayer which goes merrily along playing frame by frame until it hits the blank frame
and doesn't know what to do so it locks up. A standard TV DVD player older than this security effort is too stupid to notice
and goes happily along.
I tested
a few others in my collection by Sony and found that Xine sometimes plays them but Mplayer consistently bails. Also, the problem
may not manifest itself in the same way in every DVD.
Mplayer's FAQ's mentions this and indicates the problem can be fixed but not without recompiling mplayer. As I don't play commercial
DVD's on my PC, I haven't bothered to try it.
P.S.
Make sure you have a lot of disk space. If you start to run out some of the last processes can fail and not give
you any clue as to why.
Convert an m4a audio file to a mp3
I use Audacity to mix sound tracks for home videos. Audacity does not recognize m4a ipod audio files. I found these from
another webpage.
faad foobar.m4a to convert to wav
lame foobar.wav foobar.mp3 to convert to mp3
The script below, also found on the web, automates the process
#1 install faad2 (urpmi faad2, etc.)
#2 run bash script:
# Put this script in the directory where you have the m4a files # # Dump
m4a to wav to mp3
for i in *.m4a
do
base=`basename "$i" .m4a`
faad -o - "$i" | lame -h -b 192 - "$base.mp3"
done
also,
faad -i FILENAME 2>&1 | grep artist (to get the artist of a m4a file.)
will return the artist of a m4a.
Lastly if you want to move all those resulting mp3's to another directory
find / -type f -name "*.mp3" -exec mv {} /path/of/the/directory/ \;
Karamba and Superkaramba
If you plan to install and use Karamba or Superkaramba you will need to have lm_sensors installed. Almost all the themes
use it to monitor hardware temperatures and fan speeds as well as other things. Here is my experience installing it in Mandriva 10.2.
Get the red eye out!
Red eye is a problem with compact cameras. If you set the flash on redeye you have to have your subjects stand still for
the shot. I prefer to set the flash on normal and remove the redeye in Gimp (you can do the same in Photoshop). “But
that's a pain” some people say. Au contraire, not if you do it my way.
Forget the cloning method some subscribe to and zoom in on one or both eyes. With the lasso tool or photoshop equivalent
draw around the red part of the eye; include a little of the surrounding area. Then right click on the image and choose: Tools
– Color tools – Hue-Saturation.
Toggle on red and reduce the saturation until the red is gone. If you can't get all the red out without making the eye
color look unnatural then do as much as you can and then switch to magenta and do the same.
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