Do you ever get a lot of video links from friends over IM and you wish you could actually just save them first? Well, you could download them via clive on the command line.

clive downloads videos from YouTube

It’s really nifty if you could save them and video them later, without having to browse it on the internet first. At least, for me, I think this is really cool.

Another awesome thing about clive is that it could download videos even from Google Video, CCTV, among others. See? Even other sites with video streaming could be a source for extraction via clive. How nifty is that? Also, the command to use when you want to download a video is easy to remember:
clive <http://www.youtube.com/yourvideohere>
It will save the file from wherever you run it. If you run clive on your home directory it will save the file there.
And in case you still find it a bit difficult to remember there’s a front-end for clive and it’s called abby. It might be easier to use if you prefer something graphical.

I suppose that files downloaded as mp4 would benefit those who use ipods. And at least it’s way better than getting stuck with only flv files. I tried playing the videos I downloaded and they were quite alright. This looks like something I might be using a lot in the coming days. My friends and co-workers give me interesting video links from time to time.

Audacious. Screenshot by Clair Ching, 2008.

The search for the perfect music player will always follow me. In any case I am currently running Audacious and for most of those who have been used to the old school WinAmp, the general look and feel of Audacious is similar to it.

In any case Audacious has some plugins which you might find useful, depending on the stuff you play. It also has an equalizer and no pre-set options. So you’d have to listen well and make sure that you get the settings of your choice if you’re not used to setting the equalizer manually. The XMMS website has the WinAmp Equalizer settings shared on its site and you can use that too. I’ve learned about that from Simon who shared the tip about using WinAmp presets on Audacious, XMMS and BMP. As for themes, you could download XMMS themes on Gnome-look

The quest for an awesome music player happens every so often. I’ve gotten used to Rhythmbox but it has no equalizer =_= I’ve been frustrated with how my music sounds like and it has been tough considering that I prefer working while listening to music.

Exaile has come to my rescue!

Tabbed playlists in Exaile, screenshot by Clair Ching (2008)

Exaile has smart playlists, tabbed music browsing, a bunch of plugins and an equalizer! Yes. An equalizer. I was told that Banshee also has these features but because I miss using Exaile, I decided to install it for the sake of reminiscing, as well reacquainting myself with this nifty application and the equalizer. Sometimes you catch yourself wanting to hear more of the bass or less of it, in the case of some songs. This is just awesome for me.

Exaile has an equalizer, screenshot by Clair Ching (2008)

The smart playlists are great when you just feel like listening to a particular set of songs based on genre and artists or whatever you feel like.

Another great thing about Exaile is that you could have a list of your files on the panel at the side of your playlist. In case you wanted to look for certain music files, you don’t need to open up your file manager. It’s just a few clicks away

Exaile lets you view lists of files on the panel, screenshot by Clair Ching (2008)

I currently miss the lyrics plugin I had on Rhythmbox but I think that the newer version of Exaile has one too. So it might not be too far away from me, in this case.

If you have a huge collection of music files already, sometimes you realize that you were too lazy to add tags and/or descriptive file names to them. It’s a mess! Especially when you are looking for particular artists or titles or you’re in the mood to create a ‘mix CD’/'mix tape’ But no need to worry! Ex Falso will help you organize your files.

Ex Falso screenshot by Clair Ching, 2008.

Just look for a package of this nifty application in your distro’s repository and voila~! Soon you will have this tool ready to save you from mess!

Ex Falso has three main panes. One is for viewing the directories/folders that you have on your computer. The one below it is for the songs listed down. And the last one, which is the main pane, will have various tabs that will let you manage the information on the files.

You could do the following:
1. Edit tags one by one, or by batch.
2. Give tags based on the filenames.
3. Assign track numbers.

You could assign various tags, even your own tags, if you want to. There’s an Add Tag feature, after all. Sometimes when adding tags, I mistype labels or the tag type so it looks silly when I read the tag type “artst” so I have to change that in the Tags tab of the main pane.

Note that it seems like you need to save your changes in one tab before they are reflected in the other tabs. Aside from that you need to do some other thing first before they are reflected. It seems to not immediately load the changes that a user makes. There’s a Preview button you could click so you could check out the changes anyway.

Have fun re-tagging your files!

Rhythmbox is the default on Ubuntu and these days I find VLC’s user interface too limited when it comes to playing music files. I’d rather stick with Rhythmbox or if I am playing songs found in one directory, I could make do with Totem. But if you want more options in managing playlists for your mediaplayer you need more than that.

Gmusicbrowser in iTunes layout, by Clair Ching 2008.

Enter Gmusicbrowser. In the package manager Synaptic, I recall reading something like it’s a jukebox. Maybe so. But I find it overwhelming. You have many options to choose from when it comes to handling your playlists. There are also different views to choose from, and they are based on commonly used Linux music-playing apps.

What I like about it:

• Many kinds of layouts. You could select the type of layout based on the familiarity you have with the UI of other apps.
• The usual features are still there. Editing the information of the music file, etc.
• You could have many filters for a playlist.
• You have a separate window for the music library browser. Dragging and dropping from there to the playlist of your choice is easy.

Things I didn’t like:

• Too much information. Too many tabs. This is not always good because the tabs overlap sometimes.
• Some of the filter descriptions seem vague. And I couldn’t see other type of filters could be used.
• It feels like its cramming too much in one app.

But I still find it useful despite my gripes. I don’t have that many playlists but I appreciate the Foobar 2000 like user interface. It makes playlists more obvious.

Some screenshots:

Editing song properties, by Clair Ching 2008

The music browser, by Clair Ching 2008.

With the library context, by Clair Ching 2008.

In case you’re getting bored with the default app on your computer, try giving this a chance. You might find it nifty when it comes to your collection.

And videos, too!

My boyfriend has been using Banshee while I decided to stick with Rhythmbox simply because it’s a default and I wanted to give it a chance. I’ve used Exaile (and it’s one of the players I really like) and Amarok (which is awesome) before and it’s because I used to not like Rhythmbox for some reason or another. Now that I am more used to Rhythmbox, I like using it. But I thought that I should see Banshee because I am curious. So without installing it, I checked it out last night.

Some things I liked about Banshee:

• Many extensions. Waaai~ You could do a lot of things with Banshee!
• It has an equalizer!
• There is a way for you to view the albums and artists sorted out in such a way that even within the same album, you could still segregate the artists. (For multi-artist albums, that is.)
• When you hover the cover art, it will be magnified. It’s useful when want to see a detailed CD cover.
• You could manage your files’ tags vai Nereid.
• You don’t have to add files into your library to play them.
• It looks really clean and sleek.

Now apparently they added video support, which is a good thing! It could replace VLC or Totem as your all-around media player.

I would’ve taken screenshots of Smplayer at work on my computer right now, it’s just that it’s not working right For some reason or another the video looks quite saturated when I try watching it on Smplayer but it looks ok on VLC and other players. Hrmm. But I’ve used Smplayer on Windows before and it’s a really great way to watch videos.

It’s very convenient because of the user interface. You get a menu with options on whether to include subtitles, etc. At the bottom of the video you have a volume control slider, the playback, pause, rewind and forward buttons. On top of the video playback screen would be the screenshot icon, preferences button, also the places where you select the audio and subtitle tracks to be loaded.

The nice thing about Smplayer is that it makes it easier for those not familiar with Mplayer to choose various options and preferences via the graphical user interface. Those are things you could do on Mplayer no matter what. It’s just that for those who are not used to it, it won’t be easy to do so. So Smplayer is one way to go about it.

I think that whatever problem I am having with Smplayer could be solved but I’d have to read up a bit more first. ^^; I hope that when you check it out, you won’t have issues at all and enjoy the experience of watching videos using that.

I got a video in the Matroska file format — something that doesn’t usually happen to me. I would often get files in avi though. Or mpeg. I know I used to watch anime with mkv extensions but recently I haven’t. I did a fresh install of Ubuntu Hardy Heron so I didn’t have VLC yet. I tried looking for matroska gstreamer plugins, etc. on Synaptic and yet I found none. I was able to play it using Mplayer but I also wondered what else I could use to play the video. I installed VLC via Synaptic and voila~! I could watch the video already.

If you are new to Linux and are just using the applications installed by default, you might encounter some difficulties. But if you’re the type who will search for the packages which will let you do whatever you want, you’d be fine. Totem seems to lack that ease of use when it comes to new users or even not-so-new users. Mplayer might have an interface which isn’t quite as pretty as Amarok, Rhythmbox, VLC, etc. but it’s a very nifty mediaplayer.

Disclaimer: I don’t have an iPod but some of you might have one. Or you might come across fellow new Linux users who want to ask you about this topic.

HowToForge has a detailed guide on managing your iPod with gtkPod.

It tells you how to do the following:

• Configure gtkPod and that you’d have to do it just once.
• Load your iPod into gtkPod
• Upload music into your iPod
• Download music from your iPod
• Manage playlists

After reading the guide, you could also read more about gtkPod.

Seems to me that a lot of phones these days can play 3gp. Sometimes commuting to work is so long so to kill of boredom, I read a book or play a game on my phone. But sometimes I really feel that I could watch something while I am standing in line for a shuttle to the train station. So there’s only one thing I must do: look for file converters! Here are links to some of the ones I read about.

3gp Converter
It’s an app with a graphical user interface which basically lets a user convert files using ffmpeg as a backend.
FLV to 3gp file converter
This also uses ffmpeg. Just run the script and you could convert one batch of FLV files. If you have videos of ‘howtos’ that you want to see, this is really going to be something useful!
3gp Movie Wizard
They’ve tested this on the Motorola V360. In any case they say that it could convert from almost any file type to 3gp. Sounds nifty ne?

All these apps give links and tips with regards to ffmpeg so follow them carefully! And after that, happy video watching!