BrightHub’s guide on how to use your iPod with KDE4 gives you a better idea if you are a KDE user. And this is through the use of Amarok, a media player for KDE. Amarok not only lets you play music but it also lets you synchronize your music to your media devices. Now that sounds cool, right?

Basic tips from the guide:

• Start Amarok then connect your iPod. And you’d have to explicitly make Amarok remember your iPod.
• Select songs on your collection list then right click on them and select the option to transfer to your media device, which happens to be your iPod.
• You could also back up your iPod’s music. Now this sounds like a good thing to me especially since I am using an iPod Nano with only 8GB of space for media files. It means I could have my music sorted out by type and just keep backing them up from time to time, depending on the amount of space I need and how much music I want to cram into the iPod.

Their guide makes me want to try out Amarok too and see how convenient it is. But there’s also Banshee. I’d want to try both, probably later this week.

Are you using Amarok too when it comes to managing your iPod? Share some other tips if you’ve got any. It could be related to connecting and/or disconnecting your iPod, or it could be a way to manage all your music. Whatever it is, I am sure someone’s going to appreciate all the help.

Post from: New Linux User

Of course there are a whole bunch of social networking sites that help us with promoting our causes as well as our organizations. There’s Twitter, Facebook, Blip.tv, and so on. But what do we post on these sites? What tools can we use to process the raw material we have?

We’ve got tools for multimedia like Avidemux, GIMP and Audacity. For those who are interested in podcasting, I am sure Audacity is one thing to check out because of its features that could be used in podcasting. You could cut clips, have fade in and fade out effects and so on. There are versions for Linux, Mac and Windows so that you folks out there could enjoy using this for your needs. I once shared a guide on how to make a ringtone using Audacity but you could also use that as a basis on cutting an audio clip.

GIMP is one heck of a useful tool for processing images. Its user interface is definitely not Photoshop’s but in terms of features, there’s a lot that it offers. If you take a look at the GIMP registry, the many plugins and scripts will blow you away. It will also help you in making it more useful and easier to manipulate images using GIMP.

And then there’s Avidemux. I wasn’t able to play around with it a whole lot but this looks like a promising tool for those who have video blogs and presentations to share. It’s very nifty, I like it and would love to learn more on using it too. The nice thing about it is that there’s quite a number of guides on the Avidemux wiki.

These are but tools to help us deal with broadcasting our information. At the end of the day, we must know how these tools will help us in conveying the messages we have, in making sure that we’ve got the material we need for the channels we want to enter and so on. Every organization has something to share — it’s a matter of how, when and why after you realize what they are.

And then there are also content management systems. But I think that there could actually be separate blog entry for them altogether. There’s too many aspects of CMSes that are worth talking about, I think.

Post from: New Linux User

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.

Post from: New Linux User

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

Post from: New Linux User

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.

Post from: New Linux User

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!

Post from: New Linux User

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.

Post from: New Linux User

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.

Post from: New Linux User

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.

Post from: New Linux User

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.

Post from: New Linux User