Translations by CMasami

All about playing music and video files, CDs, DVDs as well as importing, managing and editing your photos and pictures.

Music and audio

Whether you want to play, rip, edit or organize your music, Ubuntu has the tools you need.

<application>Rhythmbox</application> supports many useful features, some of which are turned off by default. For example, it can show the album cover of the song currently being played, or share music with others.

To access these optional features, press <menuchoice><guimenuitem>Edit</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Plugins...</guimenuitem></menuchoice> and select the features which you would like to use by ticking them.

When you insert an audio CD, the <application>Sound Juicer</application> CD player and ripper opens automatically. If you are connected to the Internet, <application>Sound Juicer</application> will display the CD artist, album and track names.

To play the CD, click the <guibutton>Play</guibutton> button or press <keycombo><keycap>Ctrl</keycap><keycap>P</keycap></keycombo>. To play a particular track, double-click on the track or select the track and click <guibutton>Play</guibutton>.

As an alternative to <application>Sound Juicer</application>, the <application>Rhythmbox Music Player</application> is also able to play CDs. Simply insert a CD, ignore or close <application>Sound Juicer</application>, start <application>Rhythmbox</application> and double-click the audio CD item in the <guilabel>Devices</guilabel> list.

If you would like to keep a copy of an audio CD on your computer without needing to insert the CD to listen to it, it is possible to <emphasis>rip</emphasis> or <emphasis>extract</emphasis> the music onto your computer.

Follow the instructions in the Sound Juicer manual on <ulink type="help" url="ghelp:sound-juicer#extracting">how to rip audio CDs</ulink>.

Other audio-related tasks

Ubuntu provides a wide range of tools for all of your audio playing, editing and recording needs.

Change the track details of music

If you have music files which have incorrect or incomplete information about the artist or album which they are from, install <application>Cowbell Music Organizer</application>. Cowbell allows you to edit track details, and can automatically correct track information for many CDs.

Use a different music player

Many alternative music players are available apart from the default Rhythmbox Music Player. These include Amarok, Banshee Music Player, Beep Media Player, Exaile! and Muine Music Player. Each player has its own strengths and weaknesses, and which one you use will probably depend on personal preference.

Listen to Podcasts

Podcasts are a way of listening to music and radio shows broadcast on the Internet. Thousands of different shows are available, such as <ulink url="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/waystolisten/podcasts/">BBC Radio</ulink>, <ulink url="http://www.lugradio.org/">LugRadio</ulink> and <ulink url="http://www.thenakedscientists.com">The Naked Scientists</ulink>. The Rhythmbox Music Player is able to play podcasts. See the <ulink type="help" url="ghelp:rhythmbox#podcast">Rhythmbox manual</ulink> for more information.

Record sounds and music

Edit sounds and music

To edit audio, install <ulink url="http://www.jokosher.org/">Jokosher</ulink> or <ulink url="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</ulink>. Jokosher is able to record audio as well as edit it, and Audacity provides many powerful sound-editing features.

Install a full suite of multimedia editing applications

If you would like to turn your computer into a multimedia production suite, why not consider installing <ulink url="http://ubuntustudio.org/">Ubuntu Studio</ulink>? It provides a large selection of applications for creating audio, video and graphics.

You can listen to <emphasis>streaming audio</emphasis> from the Internet. This can be thought of as an online radio service, as it is usually broadcast live.

Install the <application>Last-Exit</application> player to listen to the <ulink url="http://www.last.fm">Last.fm</ulink> service.

Install <application>RealPlayer 10</application> to watch and listen to streams in the <emphasis>Real Media</emphasis> formats. <application>RealPlayer</application> is available from the <emphasis>Commercial</emphasis> repository.

Install the <application>gtkpod</application> package from the <quote>Universe</quote> repository (see <ulink type="help" url="ghelp:add-applications">Add Applications</ulink>).

See the <ulink url="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/IPodHowto">Community Help pages</ulink> for more information on using an iPod with Ubuntu.

Ubuntu supports many other audio players. Most of these work simply by plugging them in to your computer and copying music onto them.

Users of <emphasis>Creative Nomad Jukebox</emphasis> audio players may need to install the <application>gnomad2</application> package from the <quote>Universe</quote> repository to be able to use their device (see <ulink type="help" url="ghelp:add-applications">Add Applications</ulink>).

Movies, DVDs and videos

In order to play DVDs, you must install some additional software. Unfortunately, DVD support cannot be provided by default in Ubuntu due to legal and technical restrictions.

Many commercial DVDs are <emphasis>encrypted</emphasis> and so require the use of <emphasis>decryption</emphasis> software in order to play them. In some countries, the use of such decryption software is not permitted by law. Verify that you are within your rights in using it.

Install the following packages (see <ulink type="help" url="ghelp:add-applications">Add Applications</ulink>):

If you would like to play encrypted DVDs (see the legal note above), press <menuchoice><guimenu>Applications</guimenu><guimenuitem>Accessories</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Terminal</guimenuitem></menuchoice> and type the following into the screen which appears, followed by the <keycap>Return</keycap> key:<screen>sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh</screen>

Videos can come in a range of different formats. However, some of these formats are proprietary or commercial and so cannot be included in Ubuntu by default. As a result, additional software must be installed to allow you to view such formats. The following applications may be able to play certain formats which the default applications are unable to handle:

See <ulink type="help" url="ghelp:musicvideophotos#codecs">Multimedia Codecs</ulink> for information on installing support for other audio and video formats.

Watch videos in a web browser

Many videos available on the Internet can be played from within your web browser. However, many of these require an additional <emphasis>browser plugin</emphasis> to be installed first.

The plugins you require depend on the format of the videos you would like to watch. A short list of plugins available for the default <application>Firefox Web Browser</application> is given below:

For the <application>Mplayer</application> plugin, install the <application>mozilla-mplayer</application> package.

For the <application>VLC</application> plugin, install the <application>mozilla-plugin-vlc</application> package.

For the <application>Helix</application> plugin, install the <application>mozilla-helix-player</application> package.

For a free (open-source) <application>Flash</application> plugin, install the <application>mozilla-plugin-gnash</application> package. For the proprietary <application>Flash</application> plugin, install the <application>flashplugin-nonfree</application> package. See <ulink type="help" url="ghelp:internet#web-plugins-flash">Flash multimedia plugin</ulink> for more information.

As well as online audio broadcasts (podcasts), many video broadcasts are available from the Internet too. Ubuntu provides several optional applications which you can use to watch videos from the Internet:

Miro

<application>DeVeDe</application> is a DVD authoring application capable of creating DVD discs which can be played in set-top DVD players.

For more information, see <ulink url="http://www.rastersoft.com/programas/devede.html">the DeVeDe website</ulink>.

<application>Kino</application> is an advanced video editor. It features excellent integration with IEEE-1394 (Firewire) for capture, VTR control, and recording back to the camera. It captures video to disk in Raw DV and AVI format, in both type-1 DV and type-2 DV (separate audio stream) encodings.

<application>PiTiVi Video Editor</application> is a simple, easy to use video editor.