If you are lucky the site that you have downloaded the music from is offering it in other formats as well. If not, your best bet is to convert the audio format into a supported one.

I have reviewed more than a dozen audio converters in the past. From Helium Audio Converter over Mobile Media Converter and Media Cope to Quick Media Converter and specialized tools such as Flac to Mp3.

FlicFlac is a free portable audio converter for Windows that supports several popular music formats including mp3, wav, ape, flac and ogg. It lacks support for other popular audio formats like aac on the other hand.

All you need to do to convert audio files is to drag and drop them into the drop area in the application window or click on the area to open a file browser.

Before you do that you may want to change the output format, Flac is selected by default, to another format. A click on the new format makes it the default output format for the conversion. You may also want to click on the settings button to make changes to the audio quality of the output or to integrate the audio converter into the shell to make it accessible in Windows Explorer. The latter allows you to convert audio files right from within the file manager.

Users can furthermore select to delete the input audio files after successful conversions. FlicFlac is definitely not the most complete audio converter but not all users need a program that supports all known audio files or offers editing options.

Portability and ease of use, those two are the biggest strengths of FlicFlac. Windows users can download the latest version of the audio converter from the developer website.

For that we need to look at two things. First we need to download and convert YouTube videos and then add them to the song collection. There are lots of options to download YouTube videos, but in this guide I will concentrate on methods that make it as easy as possible.

First option is the web based service Youtube to Mp3. It is one of the easiest to use if you only want to download and convert a handful of YouTube music videos to mp3 to add them to your iTunes music collection.

All that needs to be done is to paste a YouTube video url into the form on the site. A click on the convert video button displays information about the video and an option to download the mp3.

Add-ons are available for Firefox and Google Chrome that display the download mp3 link next to YouTube videos directly making the process more comfortable.

The second option is a desktop program for Windows that can mass download YouTube videos and convert them to mp3 locally. Download and install Free FLV Converter from the developer website over at Koyotesoft. Make sure you pay attention to the installation dialog if you do not want a new search provider or search page in your default web browser.

Once installed enter a search term on the Search Video page and click on Search. This displays a list of YouTube video matches. Before you now start to download videos switch to the TubeQueue tab and select Audio only as the output format. This automatically converts downloaded videos to mp3 so that it is not necessary to convert the files manually. You can configure output settings in detail here. If you prefer a different output bitrate or audio codec you can configure it here.

Switch back to the Search Video tab and click the Download button to start downloading all the selected files. The program saves and converts the videos automatically so that you end up with audio files that you can import into iTunes.

Adding the new songs to iTunes is actually not a big problem. One could drag and drop songs or folders to the iTunes window to add them, launch them in iTunes or select File > Add File or Folder to iTunes.

The two methods describes above can be used to add new songs found on YouTube to iTunes or the local mp3 collection. Is it legal? That depends largely on your local laws. Consult a lawyer if you are unsure.

Here is how it works: You need to download the freeware for Windows from the developer website. You may need to install the quiz software with elevated rights, this was the case on my 64-bit Windows 7 test system.

First thing you need to do after starting the program is to click on the Options button to configure the settings. Here you can configure the root folder of your mp3 collection, sub folder inclusion and the difficulty setting.

You can add players in the main menu. Just write each player’s name in the form at the top and click the add player button to add them to the game. You start the game with a click on the next button.

The program picks music tracks randomly before the quiz interface is displayed. The current player can pick a skill level from eight different levels. Easier skill levels add less points to the score of the player than more difficulty skills. The intro skill for instance plays the first seconds of a song and awards four points to the score of the player if answered correctly, the slow skill on the other hand while awarding 12 points for a successful answer plays the song in slow motion making it much harder to identify.

The program displays multiple choice answers. To make it more difficulty, players need to select both the artist and the song title to score. Players can play back the song normally after they have answered the quiz question or simply continue and load the next player’s question.

Windows users can download Mp3 Quiz from the developer website. The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the operating system. It requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 or higher.

The site clearly has been created by people who love video games. The organization goes so far as to claim that they are “dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of video game music as an art form.” Up in the right hand corner you will notice a mascot. That mascot will change with every page reload and you can click on them for more information. They come from a myriad of games and are undiscriminating of systems, as does the music within the site.

There are several ways to reach the music within the site. The latest songs are listed on the right. Random songs are listed towards the bottom of the page. You can search for games that may have remixes by name. Typically, games for the NES, SNES, and Sega will a few good songs to choose from, but new games have a growing number of remixes as well. You can list songs by game alphabetically or by number of remixes from the Music menu at the top of the page. You can also go to the torrent page.

Torrents are often associated with illegal downloading, but this is an example of legal file sharing. In fact, using the torrents will help the site. How can it do that? Simple: torrents save the site bandwidth costs. The files in the torrents are the same ones that you can download from the site. By using the torrents, the bandwidth comes from fellow users rather than traditional web servers. The torrents have a lot of content. At the time of writing, you can download the first thousand songs, the next nine hundred songs, and twenty nine albums. The albums often come in both MP3 and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) formats, so the quality of the tracks is high.

Here are some recommendations. I tried to represent a variety of tastes and systems. The one thing these songs have in common, besides being based on video games, is good sound quality. Keep in mind that any assertions made are my opinion and subjective. (I make no claims to be a music expert.)

• Chrono Trigger – The Frog Dance : A fast paced, chipper tune (probably house or club genre). It is suitable for a workout playlist.
• Final Fantasy 11 Online – A Cinematic Heaven : An example of an orchestral song. The sampling may be noticeable to experienced ears, but it still pleasant.
• Final Fantasy 13 – Blue Skies : An example of a song with vocals, but distinctly techno. Trance influences soften its edges.
• Super Metroid – In Your Prime : This composition starts off very dark but steadily increases the tempo to a climax. An interesting work.
• Sonic the Hedgehog – April Rain : A whimsical tune that will evoke nostalgic memories within seconds. The style is a blend of orchestral and techno music.

The web site and community there encourage others to try their hand at creating new remixes. They have a variety of tutorials and avenues for feedback. There is a list of software on the Links page (see “Music-Making Software”), but the tutorials are general enough to accommodate various types software and tools. If you wanted to learn how to make music on a computer, this is not a bad community to learn from.

If you are interested in contributing and not just consuming, I would encourage you to read the Content Policy. While it does not claim ownership to the uploaded music or anything alarming, they outright specify that they typically do not take down content. Once you post something on the site, it is expected to stay there. While this makes sense for fans, it may not for composers. In general, it is good to be aware of rules like this.

With thousands of songs, and several sources to download from, most people should be able to find something to add to their MP3 collection. Enjoy the music. Let us know in the comments if you find a song worth downloading.

Thankfully, software does exist that can streamline the tag editing process. Free programs like Mp3nity make it easy to find the files that are insufficiently labeled, fix the problem, and be on your way. To give it a try, download the program from here, follow the default installer through the simple steps, and open the program once finished.

There is a lot that can be said about Mp3nity’s interface, and your attitude towards it may swing back and forth as you find yourself using the program. Immediately upon starting the program up, users might be tempted to think the arrangement… well… dated. The buttons look old, and the setup just generally looks unprofessional.

However, the functionality of the interface is top-notch. Everything is right where you need it. Choose the files you want to edit by navigating through the folder tree in the bottom left corner of the window. Be careful as you go to right-click on the folder and select Check Folder + Subfolders if you would like to display everything inside. Your selections will appear in the space above.

Next, highlight any tracks you want to edit the tags of. If you are working on the titles of individual tracks chose only one file at a time, or use the Shift and Control keys to make more sweeping changes like album name corrections or even genre transfers. As you highlight files you will notice the fields in the middle bottom window become accessible. In addition, information about the collective files, such as how many are selected and how large and long they are is displayed in the bottom right window.

It is not necessary to hunt down track information yourself to use to edit the tracks with. Instead, select whatever tracks you feel have incorrect tags and click the From Web button on the graphical toolbar. This will bring up suggestions as to what the correct information may be from multiple databases. Make a selection and click Set Tags to complete your changes.

Mp3nity is capable of tackling more complicated tasks as well. While it does not convert into many of the varied music file formats available today, it can convert to mp3 and WMA. You can also manipulate the program to create custom playlists more easily than in many music players.

The program is offered as a free and premium version. The free version is fully functional and will never expire. The premium version adds features like CD ripping, file conversions, mass lyric and picture search and better performance to the program.

Managing music is no easy task, but it is one of the most important aspects of keeping a respectable and brag-worthy library. Finding the specific selections you want quickly should not take hunting through folders. With the help of management software like Mp3nity, even the clumsiest, most unorganized individuals can get to the files they want without difficulty.

Many users like to keep FLAC files on their desktop computer and mp3 files of the same songs on their portable mp3 player or mobile phone. But how can you convert FLAC to mp3? Lets find out.

There are a lot of tools out there that promise free conversions but do not keep up to the promise. Some convert only 50% of the files while others nag you into buying the full version before they let you convert flac files to mp3.

A free solution is Koyotesoft’s Free Mp3 Wma Converter which supports the FLAC format among others. You need to pay attention to the program’s setup though as it tries to install additional programs that you may not need. This includes a CD Ripper or a trial version of a shareware program. Additionally, it tries to install the Dealio toolbar and change the default search engine to Yahoo. All of those options can be disabled during installation.

You can drag and drop Flac files to the program interface or use the plus icon to add songs from the local hard drive.

Make sure mp3 is selected as the output format. You can change the default quality setting of 128 Kbps up to 320 Kbps there as well. A click on convert converts the FLAC files to mp3.

Please note that you can select a different output format, supported are for instance ogg or wav as well (but not aac). The program uses Lame to encode the music into different formats. A click on the settings button opens the options window with many different settings.

You can add as many FLAC files as you want from the local hard drive, and all of them will be batch converted once you hit the convert button. File names will be retained, only the file extension changes to the selected format.

You can download the program from the developer homepage.

I want to walk you through the upgrade process for Banshee 2.0 on Ubuntu. You don’t have to be using the most recent beta release of 11.04, but you really can’t go back any further than Ubuntu 10.04. With that in mind, let’s see what Banshee 2.0 will bring you and how you can get it installed.

New Features

Here is a list of the new features offered in 2.0.

Artist/Album Browser Track Actions: Finally you can right-click on an artist or album and select an action to act upon the selection. From that list you can Add to play queue, Play after, Add to play list, write to CD, edit track information, and more.

‘Play After’ Queue Options: From the Play After menu option you can insert a track or an entire album after the currently playing track. This makes listening to must on the fly very easy.

User Interface Improvements: Several changes have been made with a goal of having a clearner and user-friendly UI. These changes include:

• Removal of active source titlebar.
• Search now beside volume button.
• Smaller icons.
• Hidden counts for libraries.
• Name group-separators..
• Seek slider and search area can be resized.
• Podcast episodes now shown in grid and include descriptive lines.

Ubuntu One: The Ubuntu One Music Store is no longer an extension, but a part of the core Banshee application. No more enabling this feature. SoundMenu extension also enjoys this same change.

Subtitles: Support has been added for embedded and external subtitles.

Enhancements

There have been a ton of enhancements that are now available in Banshee 2.0. Some of these enhancements include:

• Support Amazon Cloud Player browsing and downloading
• Remember sources’ column configuration
• ‘Shuffle by’ respects user-selected artist/album
• MultimediaKeys: Support Pause, FastForward, Rewind, Repeat and Shuffle
• Album grid has tooltips for ellipsized text
• MusicBrainz cover art search supports CDBaby and Jamendo
• Allow to clear the play queue while in Populate mode
• Add a new ‘Recently Played’ default smart playlist
• Blank track editor spin buttons when 0
• Remove Home and Photo folder import sources
• Improved write-metadata-to-file performance
• Many improvements and fixes to the F1 user guide
• Add support for handling u1ms:// links
• AmazonMp3.Store: amazon.ca support
• Daap: Keep a list of recently used remote servers
• Windows build (alpha-quality) now available
• Mac build (beta-quality) has been updated

Installation

The installation of Banshee 2.0 is actually quite simple, if you follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-add-repository ppa:banshee-team/banshee-daily
3. Issue the command sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

You will notice, during the installation process, the Ubuntu One extension will be removed, this is normal and must be done, since this service is now rolled into the core.

Once the above commands are run open up Banshee and you should now see a much-improved interface as well as a far better performing player.

The latter offers greater flexibility and usually means that it is easier to locate a specific song or artist. Some music players and organizers on the other hand mitigate the factor, as they take music from all places and sort them automatically by artist, genre and other parameters.

Read on if you are not using iTunes, Mediamonkey or another music organizer, or would prefer your music to be in one location for easier access (for instance when copying music to your mp3 player).

Mp3 Folder Structure Maker to the rescue. The freeware can re-sort folders full of music based on your specifications.

The program interface looks a bit messy, but it is not actually that bad once you get used to it. You start by adding a directory, or individual files to the music list. You can add multiple folders and files and process them all together. Subfolders are automatically parsed and processed which means that you could theoretically pick the root folder of the drive, e.g. f: and wait until the software has processed the whole folder structure.

All mp3 files are then displayed in the list, along with artist, title, album and file name information. The program, as the name suggests, will only add mp3 files to the listing which could be a deal breaker for users who have part or all of their music in different formats.

The new folder and file structure is defined in the lower part of the interface.

The program uses variables to create the file and folder structure. Available are:

%original% – the original file or folder name
%artist% – the name of the artist or band
%title% – the title of the song
%album% – the name of the album
%firstletter% – the first letter of the artist
%year% – the year of release
%genre% – the genre of the album

It is now possible to define the new folder structure. You could for instance use %artist%\%album% to sort the music by artist and bands, and place all albums in subfolders of the artist folder. Big collections could start with firstletter instead followed by artist and album.

It is possible to keep the original file name, or change it as well based on the available variables.

The output directory needs to be defined as well, the files will be copied and not moved to the directory, keep that in mind if you have little disk space left on your drives. The program displays an example in the interface based on the user’s selection which should be used to check the new sorting to verify that the structure works for you.

It may be necessary to run the application with elevated privileges. This was the case on my Windows 7 Professional 64-bit PC. The program would not save preferences and process the music otherwise.

Words of Advise

It is a good idea to check for missing tags, especially the ones used in your new sorting structure to avoid that some files are not included in the end. Mp3 Folder Structure Maker can display those files. A click on Bad tagged Files opens a new window where the files are displayed. You may also want to make sure that band and artist names are identical for all albums, as you may end up with different artist directories otherwise.

A log file is created in the end that lists all errors and problems during the copying and renaming.

Mp3 Folder Structure Maker is available for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It runs fine on 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

Creevity Mp3 Cover Downloader is a free software for Windows that makes it dead easy to add covers to mp3 files. The program scans the My Music folder on startup and displays covers for the first mp3 file found in it. It is possible to browse for another folder in case the music collection is stored elsewhere.

Information about the active song are displayed at the top along with controls to play it and switch to another one stored in the folder. Mp3 Cover Downloader downloads six covers automatically from the Internet and displays them in its interface. A click on any of the covers and the selection of Apply adds the cover to the mp3 file.

A prompt like the one shown on the screenshot below is displayed if a cover is already present in the mp3 file.

A click on load other covers loads additional covers from the web. This is handy if the six covers listed are not matching the mp3 file.

Left and right arrows on the keyboard, and left and right icons in the header are used to switch between mp3 files stored in the active folder.

Mp3 Cover Downloader is a fast responsive program to add or change mp3 album covers. It unfortunately misses a feature to add a cover to all mp3 files of a folder which means that it takes longer than it should to add the same cover to all mp3 files of a folder.

Mp3 Cover Downloader is available at the developer website over at Creevity. It tested without problems on a 64-bit Windows 7 Professional test system. Developers state that the application is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows from Windows XP on.

MP3 Packer is a free software for Windows and Linux that rearranges data in mp3 files to generate the smallest possible mp3 file but also for other purposes such as turning VBR files into CBR files which can be handy if players are used that do not support VBR.

The application is offered as a command line version and a version with a graphical user interface on Windows. Winmp3packer, that’s the name of the gui version, has already been configured to reduce the size of mp3 files loaded into the application.

All it takes to use it is to select a folder or folders with mp3 files before clicking the process button. The application scans all mp3s located in the folders and will process them if they meet certain criteria.

A log is displayed in the end giving information about the processed files and the decrease in size.

We have run the application on three albums and it managed to decrease the size by about 5 Megabytes or 1.4%.

That may not look like much but it could add up if thousands of songs are stored on a device. The mp3 files need to be encoded with CBR for this to have any effect.

You may have noticed that the program offers additional options in its interface. Users can switch the output type from VBR to CBR, configure a fixed minimum bitrate, strip non-mp3 data from files and set a different output folder to avoid that files are overwritten by the application.

MP3Packer can be a handy program to run once on a mp3 collection to save space on the storage device. The application is available for download at the official website. (via)

Nobody knows that the annoucement will be but the concensus on the web, and I’d agree with them all, is to expect a subscription-based streaming service.

To be honest this could be an extremely good thing to help get people away for their frankly awful effort that is the iTunes software itself.  It remains to be seen though just how mobile network carriers will see the move.  The majority of purchases through the iTunes store will now take place on devices such as the iPhone and adding a streaming service could place significant stresses on mobile networks that have already had to introduce usage caps for some smartphone users.

Some people are also speculating that the move could see the beginning of the end for the MP3.  To be honest I would say that mobile and home broadband connections need to get much faster and more reliable for this to happen, though new technologies are already beginning to be introduced that can help on the road to this.  The CD and vinyl LP were hard to kill off because people liked a physical ‘thing’ they could hold and collect.  It can very easily be argued that people won’t have any such attachment to a digital music or video file.

Whatever the announcement, and however (un)forgettable it turns out to be, we’ll bring you the news here at gHacks.net

In this instance I am going to show you how to use the Nautilus Actions tool to directly add music to your Rhythmbox Play Queue. Although the action will not initiate the playing of the music, it’s a very easy way to fill up your play queue.

A few notes

First and foremost, in order for this to work (outside of making sure you have everything installed) the music you will add from Nautilus must already be in your Rhythmbox library. This action takes advantage of the Rhythmbox command line tool rhythmbox-client which can not actually add music to the library. We can, however, create an action that will both enqueue the music AND begin playing the music. That is exactly what we are going to do.

A piece to install

In case you don’t already have Nautilus Actions installed, you will need to do so. This is very simple to do if you follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software Utility.
2. Search for “nautilus” (no quotes).
3. Mark Nautilus Actions for installation.
4. Okay any dependencies that might be necessary.
5. Click Apply to install.

Once the installation is complete, you can then close the Add/Remove Software Tool and get ready to work.

Creating the action

Figure 1

The first step is to start up the Nautilus Actions Configuration Tool. To do this click System > Preferences > Nautilus Actions Which will open up the tool in question. When you first open up this tool it will be empty of actions. To create an action click File > New Action. This will open the New Action tabs (see Figure 1) where you will begin to create what you need.

Now, let’s take a look at what you need to configure in order to enable an action to both add to and play from your Rhythmbox play list. We’ll look at this tab by tab.

Action

Under the action tab, you need to do the following:

• Check “Display item in selection context menu”
• Check “Display item in location context menu”
• Enter “Add and Play” (no quotes) in the Context label section.
• Check “Display item in the toolbar”
• Enter “Enqueue and Play Music” in the Tooltip section.
• Select an icon to be displayed from the drop down.
• Check “Enabled” under Action properties.

Command

Under the Command section of the command tab, you need to do the following:

• Enter /usr/bin/rhythmbox-client in the Path section.
• Enter --enqueue %M --play in the Parameters section.

Conditions

Under the Conditions tab, you need to do the following:

• Enter *.mp3; *.flacc; *.acc; *.ogg in the Filenames section. NOTE: You can add as many file types as you need here.
• Enter audio/* in the Mimetypes section.
• Check “Both”.
• Check “Appears if selection has multiple files or folders”

Figure 2

That’s it. Now you have to save the action by clicking the Save button (or clicking File > Save). The final step is to restart nautilus with the command nautilus -q. After you restart Nautilus open up Nautilus to your ~/Music folder (or where ever you house your collection) and notice the new icons (see Figure 2) in the upper right corner of the Nautilus window. In my sample I have created two actions: One that only adds music and the other that adds and then plays music. Select the folder you want to add and then press the icon for your action and the music will be added to the queue and Rhytmbox will start playing.

Final thoughts

It’s amazing how flexible Nautilus is. Even just a file manager can be so much more than that in the world of Linux. And what’s best…you can create so many different actions with Nautilus to perfectly suit your needs.

Most computer users have collected music for some time, and chance is that the music came from different sources. Those sources may have included music CDs that have been ripped into mp3 format, Internet radio recordings, P2P downloads or trades with family members and friends.

The different sources often make use of different naming and tagging conventions, and programs like The Crab make sure that this mess is sorted into a unified format.

the crab

The Crab, unlike other music collection organizers, concentrates on music albums only. The Open Source program comes with access to various music data sources, including the popular databases Amazon or Discogs. The concentration on albums makes it not the best program for processing large music collections, as it can only process one album at a time.

Albums are loaded into the program by clicking on Open and selecting the folder the music album is stored in. The Crab will automatically search the available music databases to find the album and its information. Search results are displayed, with each listing the album’s name, artist or band, and links to retrieve additional information and to select the meta tags for the music album loaded into The Crab.

A click on the more link displays all tracks of the selected album in the database, which can be used to compare the tracks with the ones stored on the computer.

The information are automatically added to the album that has been loaded into the program. They are however not saved until the Apply button is pressed. It is possible to edit the information presented before doing so.

music collection

Songs that do not belong in the album can be removed from it easily in the main interface. The Crab will automatically tag the mp3 files, create a playlist file and rename the mp3 files.

The settings offer options to prevent some of the features from being executed. Here it is for instance possible to disable the renaming of files, or change the naming templates. The Crab supports not only mp3 files but also ogg, flac, wav and wma.

The Open Source tool can be handy to process single albums in an efficient fashion. It would have been nice if the program would offer a batch mode to process multiple music albums at once.

The Crab is available for download at the Sourceforge project page.

The free Open Source program Automatic Cover Tool for MP3 offers an automated alternative. The JAVA application supports saving album art as image tags in the media files, and as folder images, in case the media files already contain an image tag.

automatic cover tool mp3

Only a few steps need to be completed to add album covers to a mp3 collection. The main interface lists all the options. Users who are in a hurry can select a folder on the computer and click the Start button to start the process. ACT-MP3 uses the Discogs database to find album covers. The process may take a while depending on the number of mp3 in the collection.

The program offers two options. First, album art can be saved to a folder as jpg, png or gif. Second the covers can be saved as image tags. Both options can be disabled individually. Users who only want to save the album covers in the folder can use that option for instance.

Another interesting setting is the option to force the program to use the folder image as the media tag if present in the folder. That may be helpful for users who have downloaded mp3 that do not contain album covers as mp3 tags but a folder image.

The detection rate of the Automatic Cover Tool For MP3 is solid, but not perfect. Additional cover art databases would be a welcome addition in the program.

ACT-MP3 is available for download at the project website over at Sourceforge. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows and Linux.

So in this article I am going to discus how to install the necessary codecs to get these media types running in both Fedora 13 and Ubuntu 10.04.

A necessary proclamation

Unfortunately Linux is hindered by licensing issues. This is why you will be hard-pressed to find a major distribution that ships with pre-rolled in MP3 support. It’s frustrating, but it’s a reality when dealing with licenses. Does that mean you have to go without listening to MP3′s and other file formats? No. You can still enjoy them, you just have to install support for those tools yourself (or allow the system to install them).

Auto-install

This is especially true for Ubuntu 10.04. When you try to use a new media type in one of the players (such as Rhythmbox or Banshee), Ubuntu will attempt to install the necessary files, applications,. and/or codecs in order allow that media player to work with said multi-media file. This works most of the time. It’s only during those occasions which it doesn’t work that will have you frustrated because you can’t use that multi-media. Fear  not.

Figure 1

Fedora 13

There is a very simple tool, called AutoX (by Dangermous – no relation to the famous cartoon character), that you can use to install nearly any codec for Fedora 12 and 13 in both 32 and 64 bit versions. You can install it with the commands:

su

rpm -Uvh http://dnmouse.org/autoten-4.7-2.fc13.noarch.rpm

After you install, you run this with the command autoten as the root user. If you do not have all of the necessary dependencies, it will install them at first run. Once running you click on the button for the codec you want and it will install (see Figure 1). Very simple.

Ubuntu 10.04

With Ubuntu 10.04 you will have to issue a few commands to get your codecs installed. Before you run those commands you need to add repositories to apt. The command to add those repositories is:

sudo wget –output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list

Now issue the command:

sudo apt-get –quiet update

Finally the next two commands will finish up the job:

sudo apt-get –yes –quiet –allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring

sudo apt-get –quiet update

You are ready to install the codecs. I will just list them out for you.

Non-free codecs: sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs

DVD support: sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 libxine1-ffmpeg gxine mencoder

Hopefully, after running the commands above, you should the codec you need installed OR now Ubuntu 10.04 should be able to auto-install any codec you need.

Final thoughts

Thanks to licensing issues it’s not a perfect world for Linux and multi-media, but it is getting close. With tools like you have above, getting your distribution up and running with multi-media isn’t all that challenging.

In this article I will show you how to install and use the clamz downloader for purchased music from Amazon.com.

Meeting the dependencies

First things first. I will be illustrating the installation on a Ubuntu (10.4) machine. You can alter this installation easily for your distribution.  I am going to show you two different installation commands, one of which should work on your system. The commands are (depending upon your release and what you have installed):

sudo apt-get install libgcrypt11-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libexpat1-dev

or

sudo apt-get install libgcrypt11-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libexpat1-dev

On my Ubuntu 10.4 system, libcurl4-gnutls-dev wouldn’t install. That’s not a show stopper as you can use the second command to install without that application.

Installation

Now that you have the dependencies installed, let’s install the application itself. We’ll be doing so, from source. Download the latest, greatest from the project download page and save it do your ~/Downloads directory. Now, from a terminal window, issue the following commands:

tar -zxf clamz-0.1.tar.gz

cd clamz-0.1

./configure && make

sudo make install

That will install the executable command clamz into /usr/local/bin/. You are almost ready to download.

Make it ready

When you purchase music from Amazon, your browser attempts to detect if you have the downloader installed. If the browser does not detect the downloader, it will then direct you to a page instructing you to install the downloader. We have to get around that. You can do this easily by scrolling all the way down to the bottom of the page (the page instructing you to download and install the downloader) you will see a line that reads:

If you have already installed the latest Amazon MP3 Downloader, click here to enable it for use with this browser.

Once you have done this your browser should save the *.amz file to your ~/Downloads directory. Now it’s time to use clamz.

Usage

Using clamz is simple. From within the directory you downloaded the *.amz file issue the command:

clamz -d ~/MUSIC AmazonMP3-XXX.amz

Where MUSIC is the directory you want the downloads to be placed in and XXX is the file name (it will be a random string of numbers and/or letters).

The files will then download from the Amazon site and be saved in the directory you chose. You can now use your Amazon MP3 files without ever having to have installed the Amazon MP3 Downloader!

Final thoughts

It may seem like a lot of work at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a piece of cake. And for those who refuse to use proprietary software, it’s a must-have if you want to download music from Amazon.com.

In this article I will show you some of these cool extensions, where to get them and how to add them.

Where to find the extensions

Most extensions will be found in your package manager. In fact, that is where I recommend you getting your extensions from, because it will ensure the extensions will work properly. So if you fire up your package manager and do a search for “banshee” (no quotes) you should see plenty of extensions. Now, let’s take a look at some of the better ones.

Figure 1

How to enable them

To enable an extension you only need to click on Edit > Preferences to open the Preferences window and then click on the Extensions tab (see Figure 1). To enable a specific extension just click on the check box associated with the extension and close the window.

Ubuntu One Music Store

Naturally, if you are using Ubuntu, you are going to want this extension. I was surprised to see how seamlessly this worked with Banshee as Rhythmbox has been proclaimed as the “official” player for UOMS.

DAAP Sharing

If you have anyone on your network running a DAAP-enabled music player (or DAAP server), you will want to be able to listen to their tunes. Do so with the DAAP sharing extension.

Alarm Extension

If you want to use your PC and your music as an alarm, this is exactly what you need. With this extension you can set numerous preferences for an alarm time as well as a sleep timer.

Liveradio

If you are a fan of internet radio, you will want to add this extension which allows you to listen to live365, shoutcast.com, and xiph.org.

Streamrecorder

If you are a fan of, say, podcasts and you want to record them off live streams you can do so with this handy little extension. This is truly a “what you hear is what you get” system. Streamrecorder allows you to record using different encoders to fit your needs/likes.

Coverwallpaper

This is a fun “toy” that will change the desktop wallpaper to the cover art of the song you are currently listening to in Banshee. The only downfall to this is that the artwork will be rather pixelated when stretched to fit your desktop.

Final thoughts

People will fall on one side of the fence or the other on these extensions. To many Banshee is nothing more than a music player. But to some, Banshee is much more. Have you found an extension for Banshee that you can not live without? If so, share it with your fellow Ghacks readers.

Audiograbber supports several mp3 encoders including Lame and BladeEnc which are both linked on the program’s download page in case they are not installed on the user system.

The options of the program are pretty extensive. It is possible to edit the CD-ROM access method, naming patterns for the extracted audio tracks and directories, enable automatic deletion of leading and trailing silence, normalization, change the output format to wav, alter quality settings, configure external mp3 encoders and to edit tags directly in the interface.

It is furthermore possible to play audio tracks directly in Audiograbber which can be handy to fine tune the resulting mp3 or wav files.

Audiograbber can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website. It is compatible with most Windows operating systems including Windows 7 and 64-bit editions.

We are concentrating the discovery in this report on music, more specifically music from artists that the majority of users has never heard about.

Muzic scans the Internet and in particular blogs for free music that is then listed on their website. The majority of music that is found this way has been produced by new bands but the occasional promo of established bands (Black Sabbath or Queens of the Stone age for instance) appears in the results as well.

This alone would be useful to discover music blogs that post information about artists and mp3 samples of their work.

The artists and songs that are listed on the homepage of the service do reveal little information. The blog posts usually state the artist name, name of the free song and the genre.

Most of the links lead to the blog the music was posted on. It is there that you find a download link pointing to one or multiple mp3s of the artist(s) that have been reviewed there. These blog posts usually contain a review of the song or artist.

But Muzic does not only display what is posted at other blogs on their own page. More important than that is probably the search and categorization of music and artists.

It is for instance possible to display popular tags, songs by genre or data. The advanced search on the other hand can be used to search for specific songs, artists, blogs or in all information at once.

The results on the other hand look like the homepage listings. But that is more than sufficient and adds to the excitement of discovery. It is probably a good idea to look at specific genres to find music that you are interested in.

All mp3 songs can be downloaded to the local computer system, this can accumulate to more than one hundred Megabytes of music per day if the blog links are followed as well.

Muzic offers a great and comfortable way of discovering new music that is being uploaded and reviewed on the Internet. An RSS feed is available to subscribe to the site and be informed about new discoveries more easily.

The tools I am talking about are mpg123 and mpg321. Although mpg321 claims to be a drop-in replacement for mpg123, I still prefer to use both tools (the former for converting .mp3 to .wav and the latter for converting .mp3 to .ogg). And in this article you will see how simple it is (using the command line) to convert these file types.

Installation

Since we will be using the command line for the conversion, we’ll install the tools from the command line. The distribution I am using for example is based on the recent, stable Debian. You will not need to add any repositories to your /etc/apt/sources.list file, because all of the tools are found on the standard repositories. To install these tools, follow these steps:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. If needed, su to root (if you use sudo in place of root, just add sudo to the beginning of the installation commands below).
3. Issue the command apt-get install mpg123 mpg321 vorbis-tools

That’s it. Now let’s take a look at how the tools are used.

Convert .mp3 to .wav

The first conversion is to .wav. Why use .wav? First and foremost, the .wav file is not compressed and is lossless, so the sound is better. The only downfall is that the files are much bigger. So, if you have a particular file and you want to retain as much quality as you can, .wav is the format to use. Of course, in this instance we are converting a lossy file type (.mp3) so there is already diminished sound quality. But why diminish it further? To make this conversion, the command looks like this:

mpg123 -w output_file.wav input_file.mp3

Where output_file is the name of the .wav file that will be converted from the mp3 file named input_file. So let’s say you want to convert the file Rush_Tom_Sawyer.mp3 to .wav. That command would look like:

mpg123 -w Rush_Tom_Sawyer.wav Rush_Tom_Sawyer.mp3

Convert .mp3 to .ogg

The .ogg format is the open source equivalent to .mp3 and is supported by many players. The .ogg format is a good format to use when creating “mix cd’s” (I’m old, I still want to say “mix tapes”), because you can fit more files per CD than if you were using the .wav format. But to convert the .mp3 to .ogg the command looks like:

mpg321 Input_File.mp3 -w raw && oggenc raw -o Output_file.ogg

Let’s examine the same file we converted to .wav above. The command to convert to .ogg from .mp3 would look like:

mpg321 Rush_Tom_Sawyer.mp3 -w raw && oggenc raw -o Rush_Tom_Sawyer.ogg

Easy right?

Final thoughts

Now you can get crafty and create batch scripts that will allow you to do batch conversions. Naturally many will think “Why would I go through that, when I can just download a handy GUI tool like Soundconverter to do the job? Why? Because it’s always smart to have the command line option around. One day you might need it.