Linux and multimedia

Tags: linux multimedia

Added: 2006-02-09T11:45

Linux and multimedia

People still, in 2006, seem to think that Linux has a problem with audio, video, ripping, compressing, converting, etc. No, people, no. For videos/dvd playing/dvd encoding, I use MPlayer. It's a command line player (don't freak out just yet), and it plays everything I can throw at it.
To play the first track on a DVD:

mplayer dvd://1
Tricky eh.
To encode a DVD, you can use mencoder. There are tonnes of options that you can select, so I've put my "ripdvd" script on the web for people to use. Of course children, you can only use it to back up DVDs that you own.
As for music, there are tonnes of options. I use XMMS (which is basically designed to look and work as similarly as Winamp as possible.)
I'm going to post links to related packages as comments below.

Don't forget as well, that most of the animation companies use Linux now. Dreamworks, Pixar, Disney to name but a few.

posted by Calum on 2006-02-09T11:45 under



Actually it is illegal to backup dvds even ones that you own. Why else would they need decrypting?


They are encrypted in a vague attempt to prevent people playing them on whichever players they want. It's not to prevent piracy - a pirate can just make a bit-for-bit copy (including encryption), and it's exactly the same. It's purely to stop people playing DVDs on players that haven't been "authorised".
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