Andrew Hudson - Fedora™ Unleashed, 2008 edition

Because of the patent and licensing issues mentioned earlier, the capability to play video files has been removed from Fedora. This functionality can be restored if you install the full version of the applications described in this section from FreshRPMs at http://www.freshrpms.net/. There you can find multimedia applications such as Ogle, Xine, AlsaPlayer, Gstreamer, Grip, Mplayer, VCDImager, VideoLAN-client, Xmms, and Zapping.

You can use Linux software to watch TV, save individual images (take snapshots) from a televised broadcast, save a series of snapshots to build animation sequences, or capture video, audio, or both. The following sections describe some of the ways in which you can put Linux multimedia software to work for you.

The noatunviewer is provided with Fedora to use as an embedded viewer in the Konqueror browser. noatunis set up as the default association for the video file formats it plays. Open a video file in Konqueror or Nautilus, and the video is shown in the viewer if it is supported. The viewer provides basic Start, Stop, and Fast-Forward VCR-type functions.

You can watch MPEG and DVD video with Xine. Xine is a versatile and popular media player that is not included with Fedora. Xine is used to watch AVI, QuickTime, Ogg, and MP3 files (the latter is disabled in Fedora).

The Macromedia Flash plug-in for the Mozilla browser is a commercial multimedia application that isn't provided with Fedora, but many people find it useful. Macromedia Flash enables you to view Flash content at websites that support it. The Mozilla plug-in can be obtained from http://macromedia.mplug.org/. Both . rpmand .tar.gzfiles are provided.

Having trouble with the Macromedia Flash plug-in for Mozilla? Just manually copy the files flashplayer.xptand libflashplayer.soto /usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.x/plugins, where x is the latest point release for Firefox (2.0.0.4 at the time of writing). An . rpmfile for Flash that should install without problems is available from http://macromedia.mplug.org/.

Another interesting video viewer application is MPlayer (not provided by Fedora), a movie player for Linux. MPlayer can use Win32 codecs and it supports a wider range of video formats than Xine, including Divx and some RealMedia files. MPlayer also uses some special display drivers that support Matrox, 3Dfx, and Radeon cards and can make use of some hardware MPEG decoder boards for better MPEG decoding. Look for Fedora pack ages at http://www.mplayerhq.hu; a Win32 codec package is also available, as well as other codec packages and a GUI interface.

The best reason to attach a television antenna to your computer, however, is to use the video card and the computer as a personal video recorder.

The commercial personal video recorder, TiVo, uses Linux running on a PowerPC processor to record television programming with a variety of customizations. TiVo has a clever interface and wonderful features, including a record/playback buffer, programmed recording and pause, slow motion, and reverse effects. Fedora does not provide any of the many applications that attempt to mimic the TiVo functionality on a desktop PC running Linux. However, several such applications, including DVR, The Linux TV Project, and OpenPVR, are listed at http://www.exploits.org/v4l/. These projects are in development and do not provide .rpmfiles, so you have to know how to download from CVS and compile your own binaries. For something a little easier, check out MythTV at http://www.mythtv.org/; a Fedora .rpmfile should be available from ATrpms.

Some TiVo users say that using this Linux-based device has changed their lives. Indeed, the convenience of using a personal video recorder (PVR) can make life a lot easier for inveterate channel surfers. Although PVR applications are not included with Fedora, open source developers are working on newer and better versions of easy-to-install and easy-to-use PVR software for Linux. For more information about TiVo, which requires a monthly charge and a phone line (or broadband connection with a newer TiVo2), browse to http://www.tivo.com/. Unrepentant Linux hardware hackers aiming to disembowel or upgrade a TiVo can browse to http://www.9thtee.com/tivoupgrades.htm or read the TiVo Hack FAQ at http://www.tivofaq.com/. A PVR makes viewing television a lot more fun!

A number of Linux sites are devoted to PVR software development. Browse to the DVR project page athttp://www.pierrox.net/dvr/.

You can now easily play DVDs with Fedora as long as you install the appropriate software. (Fedora doesn't provide any.) Browse to http://www.videolan.org/, and then download, build, and install the vlc client.

You must have a CPU of at least 450MHz and a working sound card to use a DVD player. The default Fedora kernel supports the DVD CD-ROM file system. As mentioned earlier, Xine and MPlayer do a great job of playing DVD files.

The VideoLAN HOWTO found at http://videolan.org/ discusses the construction of a network for streaming video. Although you might not want to create a network, a great deal of useful information about the software and hardware involved in the enterprise can be generalized for use elsewhere, so it is worth a look. The site also contains a link to a HOWTO about cross-compiling on Linux to produce a Windows binary.

Reference

► http://www.cdcopyworld.com/— A resource for technical information about CD media and CD writers.

► http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/ — A database of supported hardware.

► http://www.opensound.com/download.cgi— The commercial OSS sound driver trial version download.

► http:/www.xmms.org/— Home to the Xmms audio player.

► http://www.thekompany.com/projects/tkcoggripper/— A free (but not GPL) Ogg CD ripper.

► http://faceprint.com/code/ — An MP3 to Ogg converter named mp32ogg.

► http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/apps/sound/convert/!INDEX.html— Home to several sound conversion utilities.

► http://linux-sound.org/ — An excellent resource for Linux music and sound.

► http://www.cnpbagwell.com/audio.html— The Audio Format FAQ.

► http://www.icecast.org/ — A streaming audio server.

► http://www.linuxnetmag.com/en/issue4/m4icecast1.html— An Icecast tutorial.

► http://linuxselfhelp.com/HOWTO/MP3-HOWTO-7.html— The MP3 HOWTO contains brief descriptions of many audio applications and, although it focuses on the MP3 format, the information is easily generalized to other music formats.

► http://www.exploits.org/v41/— Video for Linux resources.

► http://fame.sourceforge.net/— Video encoding tools.

► http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/faq.shtml— The Teletext FAQ.

► http://xine.sourceforge.net/ — Home of the Xine DVD/video player.

► http://www.MPlayerHQ.hu/homepage/ — Home to the MPlayer video player.

► http://www.videolan.org/ — A VideoLAN project with good documentation.

► http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/— The DVD+RW/+R/-R[W] for Linux, a HOWTO for creating DVDs under Linux.

► http://www.gimp.org— Home page of The GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program).