XVID Divx4, MP3 and an AVI container

Hi All,

So - XVID Divx4, MP3 and an AVI container...

How do you create any video in this above format - that is playable in most of the so called latest DVD players - in India... I mention - "in India" - cos India is though growing faster than rest of the other countries of the world - at times we take time to implement the latest....

My dad purchased a DVD player - Onida DFX-85** .. I dont remember the last 2 digits of the version....

At the same time - probably another 6-8 months before my dad purchased - we have a family doctor who had purchased the same...

Some of the formats that played easily at my place - didnt at the Doc's place...

In the end - we came out - figuring out the common formats that play in both - so that I can download only such formats' films / videos - or convert the downloads into them....

So to convert a file to Video format - XVID MPEG4, Audio format - MP3 and in an AVI container - in the end - using Linux.. Here you go .. Follow these steps....

1. Install AVIDemux using Synaptic - for all Debian based systems.
2. For the other distro types - I dont think it is difficult to be not available...
3. After installation of AVIDemux...

a. Copy the video file / Download the video file to your Harddisk and not to any portable devices like USB drives.
b. Open the file in AVIDemux.
c. In the left hand side of AVIDemux - you see - Video, Audio and Format.
d. Select these from the drop-downs - Video - MPEG-4 ASP (XVID4), Audio - MP3(LAME), Format - AVI
e. Here above Format is the Container.
f. Finally use the Calculator tool - and then resize your video file accordingly.

Thats it... Cheers :)

I hope you all liked this post.....

PS: I presume that you have installed the latest codecs to your distro - or else please go ahead and install GStreamer plugin sets - depending upon the country you live in....

Take Care,
Ananth Gouri

Avidemux

Hi All,

These days with so many codecs - arriving daily into the computer world - at times growing faster than the population of India/China.... ;)

You may never get the latest films you download at home - to play on your DVD players due to these codec problems...

And the worst being the video codecs growing faster than the audio ones...

At these situations - you may have to check out what is the best video codec and the audio codec combination playable by your dvd players and then comes the next question....

How do I convert a Matruska / H2.64 video codecs into a playable VCD / SVCD formats using Linux???

Here is the solution... Use a free package called AVIdemux...

This AVIdemux has thousands of features and I hope you guys have enough time to explore all of them.. I dont have so much of time.... :(

One of the features I liked is - the Calculator feature.. where you can custom your Audio and Video bitrates to get an output file of your needed size... A cool feature indeed.....

There are templates for saving a file into different formats - like VCD, SVCD and many many more.....

Once you give all of your settings dont forget to save...

First time users - do things - carefully and with a backup.....

Cheers :)
Ananth Gouri

Rip a Stream with StreamRipper

Hi All,

I don't know how many of you like to listen to online radio channels. But I do :)

At times you may have some of your fav channel shows at some odd times and you would still not want to lose them.

What to do?? Simple - Rip the stream.....

Here is how you do it:

1. Install StreamRipper using Synaptic.
2. Once it is done... From there on its as simple as issuing this below command :

streamripper URL

Note: If you are behind a proxy - then issue the -p Proxy_address option - replace Proxy_address with your proxy_address in this format: protocol://username:password@address:port

Cheers and Happy streaming and happy radio-ing....

Dont forget to check out the man pages of Streamripper :)

Take care,
Ananth Gouri

Beware of IE

Hi All,

A small blog post - to keep myself blogging....

There has been a major hack to all IE users... IE == Idiotic Explorer...:P Oh sorry Internet Explorer of MS...

So don't use IE for a while... and please use some stable browsers like Opera or Firefox stable...

Cheers and take care,
Ananth Gouri

To all U music Lovers out there.....

Hi All,

This is not anything geeky or kinda related to Linux...

I don't know how many of us have enough time to go thro an app we use - to its fullest extent... At least it is the same with me most of the times - as I would have enough time to just - use the feature that I would want out of it....

So VLC Player....

This crazy app and the most loving app for all us .. To get the best sound effect and the best quality of music - and that too if you are a rock music freak like me.... You gotta try out this....

The moment you play a song - you have a ton of things you can do with VLC's options....

Here is the one that impresses most of us - Rock Freaks...

In the Audio - there you see something called Equalizer Thats it - go there and change the best settings you want for the song you would be hearing...

For the best quality with Rock music - Choose 'Rock'....

Cheers :)

Now you all know what Ananth is doing right now ;)

VLC Rocks!!!!

Tc,
Ananth Gouri

Nearing 6k Hits...

Hey All,

Its back to tennis fever... Australian Open ... !!! Yipeee...

Thought of writing a small blog post - telling you folks to try out these open source - AV Tools... AV==Audio+Video :)

1. Avidemux
2. dvd::rip
3. MP3splt - the GTK version

Cheers :)

Got some work.. Hope to get back soon and write more as well...

Hey if you folks any problems - installing these 3 sws...Do let me know :)

TC,
Ananth Gouri

Reading NTFS partitions in Debian Lenny

Hi All,

This is for some who face difficulty in reading NTFS partitions in Debian.

For a pen drive formatted in NTFS and whose device is sdb6

1. Mounting a NTFS partition:

First create a directory as 'mkdir a'
Second use this: sudo mount -t ntfs -o ro /dev/sdb6 a

Here in the second command - you are using the regular mount command but giving 2 options: 1. -t which tells that the 'type' is ntfs and -o ro : as an option telling it as read only.

Third you could use 'sudo sh' command and then cd or do anything to 'a' on the command mode or konsole mode.

2. NTFS-3G

To know in more detail as to what is NTFS-3G here you read it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS-3G

Use synaptic to install ntfs-3g and I think that you got to use the latest and updated repositories to get it working.

Once NTFS-3g is installed - you can read write and execute what all you do the same way as you do it in the Gates world.

Cheers :) Hope this was of some help for some...

I am running out of time to catch my bus to work...

TC All,
Ananth Gouri

Lucid Lynx to come with a Manual

Hi All,

This seems to be pretty interesting...

From Ubuntu 10.04 - code named Lucid Lynx - it is going to come with a manual in pdf format to help novices to kick start their *buntu* :)

And the best part I liked was - the manual would be updated once in 6 months - as in the same way for every release... Cheers to Ubuntu... :D

So - I think after Slackware guys used to write the Slackbook - and with version 2.0 of it being the last for the last 2 previous versions as well... Next is Ubuntu which is following Slackware - but in a different way altogether...

But I dont think that Slack 2.0 - is fully updated with last 11 and 12 versions of Slackware.

Things are getting better good and best for Linux and OSS...

Long live Linux..

Keep Reading and also keep forwarding ... and spread the word of Linux..

Source: http://digitizor.com/2010/01/06/ubuntu-10-04-lucid-lynx-to-come-with-a-manual/

Thanks Digitizor..

Take care,
Ananth Gouri

Thunderbird 3.0 Beta

Hi All,

Thunderbird 3.0 Beta is out and is in the Ubuntu Jaunty Repositories and I could not find it in the packages.debian.org search :(

The below link tells as to how to install the Beta version: Install Thunderbird 3.0 Beta

Any how for me Icedove is the main mail client for my laptop at home and also at office. For people who don't know what is Icedove - it is the - see the link here : Icedove - Thunderbird of Debian Project

Okay continuing, I don't want to migrate to 3.0 as it is in Beta as of now...

Once it gets stable - then I would use it and then would post the install procedure and some mail functionalities as well. Cheers :)

Thanks,
Ananth Gouri

Youtube-dl

Hi All,

The last post I did tell that UTubeRipper is not working fine.

But why worry???

There is a python command line script called youtube-dl.

It is available for the debian based distros along with the other distros as well. The only condition being it requires python with version above 2.4.

Usage of youtube-dl

youtube-dl youtube_link

youtube_link has to be in this form: http://the_link_here

By default it downloads the file in the present directory of being called on and it is in flv format.

And you can use ffmpeg to convert it to mp4 as below:

ffmpeg -i art.flv -ar 22050 art.mp4

Hope this post and the previous one helped you all to download videos in youtube using Linux and OSS.

Do 'man' for lots of youtube-dl options as well... I meant 'man youtube-dl'

Cheers and take care,
Ananth Gouri

UTube Ripper 2.0

Hi All,

Any how the older version of UTube Ripper and its usage - I had explained it in the May 09 month posts..

The sad part is that it is not working fine... And the latest being 2.0 version and the 2.0 version is also apparently not working.... :(

So lets wait till the fix is done or we or you or someone out there got to get the code and check for the bugs and of course fix it as well...;)

Cheers :)
Ananth Gouri

Year 2009 and my blog

Hi All,

To recall the last year back - I started my blog in March 09 and by the end of Dec 31st - I had written 111 blog posts. And at least more than 100 of them on Debian and Linux variants.

So cheers to me and my blog :)

And to sum up - I got a huge number of hits - of more than 5500.. Which is not a small number indeed...

So cheers to all my readers as well....

I hope to continue the same and also plan to open up a site very shortly...

Take care,
Ananth Gouri

Happy 2010

Hi All,

First of all a very happy new year to all my readers... Cheers :)

Lets hope that 2010 brings about more improvements to Linux and its devices and along with it - let the support for more and more hardware on Linux and let the creation of more utilities and packages for Linux also keep rolling....

Cheers :)

For people new to Linux - go through many sites and books available on the net...

To note some of them:
Sites:
1. www.linuxquestions.org
2. www.linux.org
3. www.lwn.net
4. www.debian.org [Specific to Debian Distro]
5. www.fedoraproject.org [Specific to Fedora Linux]
5. www.ubuntu.com [Specific to Ubuntu types]
and this list goes on and on...

Books:
1. Read some of the Christopher Negus books on some basics and also on specific tasks for a particular distro of Linux.
2. There are many books written on Linux by OReilly,McMillan, Tata McGrawhill publications - read them and many others as well..

Misc:
Ample number of sites, blogs, free sites, and et al - who provide great info about this OS.

My blog:
I write most of the things specific to Debian and sometimes I add the same for other distros as well.

Where to download the distros:
1. www.distrowatch.com - from here go to the specific distros you want and download them.
2. You dont need a better search engine in this world - till you are alive.. :) Google.com

Magazines on Linux:
1. www.lfymag.com or www.linuxforu.com
2. www.linuxjournal.com
3. www.linux-mag.com

And the best: Google is your mother and father of resources in the www world

So cheers to all and a happy new year once again and lets move forward thinking big about Linux and US.

Take care,
Ananth Gouri