Ubuntu Video - Multimedia Support
Posted by John Bradbury on 11/30/07 in CBT Training Videos, Linux
The final video in this series looks at multimedia support in Ubuntu and sums up my experience with Linux so far. I hope everyone has enjoyed the series and hopefully I’ll have a chance to come back to Linux at a future date and create a few more videos once I know what I’m doing.
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Armandh | Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
in 7.04 my home dvds would play but in 7.10 I had to go to a different player, open the player and select play disk. it would not auto start but it did play. I have not tried commercial dvds yet. it is an area that needs to be made noob compatable.
Peter | Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
afaik is this more a legal problem with the DVDs: once linux can play encrypted DVDs, it also is capable of ripping them without any further problems - this is illegal in some/most countries, and so DVD support won’t be integrated out of the box I fear, if the codecs are not supported by the developers of DVD security software, as in case with MS i persume…
andreas | Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
Thank you for your great videos. I hope you’ll make more of it.
Grrzzz | Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
Hey there,
a very easy way to add all kind of multimedia support is to install automatix2 . This little program takes care of everything
Thy | Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
a big Thank You, for those 3 Vids. It was refreshing to see u testing Linux with an open mind. Maybe we can get a few Linux or Windows “Fanatics” back to normal.
Excuse my english spelling, i know it sucks.
Greetings Thy
Ronni | Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
Yup, I’d like to thank you, too. It was a great series, and I enjoyed all these little surprises you had
You looked at this stuff from a very objective point of view - neither did you praise Linux more than it deserves nor did you say that it sucks badly in comparison to Windows. And this is something which distinguishes your videos from many other reviews and which really made me enjoy your series. Great job.
Peter | Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
As far as i know automatix ist a worse system killer. better keep hands off it.
John, thanks again for the good work - nobody should “hate” a computersystem, as long as everyone can use the one he or she preferes, everything is fine. There is just no need for geekwars
lilith2k3 | Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
i watched your final video.
and one again i have to say, you did a great job overall. thanks for three great videos about ubuntu and it’s functionality. these are rare pieces out there.
but one goof:
if you watch your video again (at 7:01) you were talking about not to find dvd-support in the repositories. but if you look close to the synaptics window there is a “library for reading dvds”, which perhaps would have done the trick
i really appreciated your work.
steve | Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
Hi John!
wanted to say the same as lilith2k3
One additional thing:
You talked that a non-techie wouldn’t probably understand the descriptions of the package manager … PLEASE click on one package and it will show you lots of details where “No package is selected” was written before:
description, homepage etc. for a package. I wondered how it is possible to use Synaptic with out finally clicking on a package name
But I think it shows a problem here, that can be easily fixed: “No package is selected” should be replaced by “Click on a package to view a description” or something.
But beside that, great job again!
I wrote you a comment on Digg after the first video, which would have maybe helped you a bit.
http://digg.com/linux_unix/First_Impressions_of_Ubuntu_Caught_on_Video?t=10830621#c10830621
PS: And no, we don’t like *.wmv because we can’t play them, but because they are in a proprietary Microsoft format: WMV = Windows Media Video.
Understand?
Thanks
Steve
John Bradbury | Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
Steve, I have now read your response on Digg and I’m sure it will be a great help as I continue to play with Ubuntu.
I also understand the reasoning behind your dislike of the Windows Media Video format. I continue to use it because it provides a great balance between quality and file size.
I will keep an eye out for an Open Source equivalent.
irony | Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
A good dispassionate-methodical approach to learning a new OS - I’m sure the developers could use these videos to ascertain how well they are doing.
You probably know by now but installing libdvd allows you to watch DVDs.
De-pro9 | Nov 30, 2007 | Reply
Kick ass keep going John.
Matt | Dec 1, 2007 | Reply
John,
This was a very nicely done set of videos. It reminded me of my first jump into Linux, which was via Ubuntu 5.10 two years ago. You do a very good job of presenting the “I have no idea what I am doing” point of view.
I had to chuckle when you commented that there were probably Linux users watching who were yelling out suggestions on how to get your DVD to play. I didn’t yell, really
I think your videos would serve potential Linux users well in taking some of the nervousness out of installing a new OS.
Your point of needing to stay current with Windows is quite valid. I’ve been using Linux exclusively for two years now and I am quite certain there are some things I no longer remember how to do.
I look forward to any further Linux exploration you share.
Daeng Bo | Dec 1, 2007 | Reply
I really enjoyed all your videos. You did a great job of illustrating both the strengths and weaknesses of Ubuntu.
Encrypted DVD playback is not obvious, and can’t be for legal reasons, but it is fairly straightforward after a Google search for “Ubuntu play DVDs.” It’s a bug PITA for new users, though, so I either set it up for them or give all my new users a link to the post I made on it. http://ibeentoubuntu.blogspot.com/2007/10/worried-about-how-to-play-mp3-and-divx.html
This three-step process solves 98% of codec issues up front and the user isn’t frustrated by being asked to search every time there’s a new codec.
I look forward to watching more of your videos, and I’m going to link to your site from my page. I think I’ll try to save you the bandwidth, though, and post the videos somewhere else (you said you allow this, right?).
Martin | Dec 1, 2007 | Reply
Hi John,
First of all I have to say I really enjoyed watching your videos, the’re great!
You said:
“I will keep an eye out for an Open Source equivalent.”
You should try ogg here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg
Greetings from Holland,
Martin
lilith2k3 | Dec 1, 2007 | Reply
i am a member of a german ubuntu-forum called “ubuntuusers.de”. and we support you, saving your bandwidth. therefore one of our members put your video for part 3 to googlevideo as fast as he got it donloaded.
http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/134491/37/
your video will be found at
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=4893959661724043864&hl=de
jami | Dec 3, 2007 | Reply
Hi John.
About the dvd stuff …
The reason why you can’t play and navigate through dvd’s “out of the box”, is a simply legal/licence problem. The Content Scrambling System (CSS), which is necessary for dvd decryption, needs a key. And the licence for the key costs money. I guess Microsoft has paid this fee and got it’s css licence OR they do the same thing what the opensource community does. Use a generator for keys. The usage of such things like “libdvdcss2″ has a indistinct legal position. So you MUST install it by hand/synaptic/aptitude/compile-src ect
cheers jami
Btw. Nice job. I want to see more
detructor15 | Dec 3, 2007 | Reply
Hy,
again nice video
I’m myself an Ubuntuuser and I have hoped that you will change over ;), but as I see, you need your filetypes [this microsoft visual studio].
But I would say, that you should try “wine” [http://www.winehq.org].
I think that your visio Software should run with wine.
Or if it does not, you have virtualbox installed, you could install Ubuntu on your Harddrive and Windows in the virtualbox ;).
Even you could many Windows programs with wine, a description how to add wine to your regular repositories is on the website [http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb]
Simply press “alt+f2″ type “gnome-terminal”, press enter and copy and paste the command for Ubuntu 7.10.
Then install per Synaptic wine.
Updates for wine will come through the normal update manager from now on.
I hope you will try a little bit more out on Ubuntu ;).
And because of your DVD…you need a special libary for that and this libary is not…legal ;).
Under Windows you get the license for that DVD Codec through the payment for Windows XP.
Greetings Detructor [no, thats NOT a typo]
freebirth One | Dec 3, 2007 | Reply
Hi folks,
Greetings from another member of “ubuntuusers.de” (*beckoning to lilith*).
I fall into line with the others: great job!
Talking deCsS: sorry, but when you’re able to print the source code of a Decrypter for CSS onto a T-Shirt (readable!), I can’t understand why someone calls this an “effective scrambling algorithm”…
anyway, for what are stand-alones…
@detructor:
I tried to install Visual Studio 2005 using wine. It crashed just while installing the .net-Framwork…so no ability doing this (using wine 0.9.46).
But running it in an vm (e.g virtual box) is a good option.
Max | Dec 3, 2007 | Reply
Hey John,
I appreciate your video introduction to Ubuntu. It even motivates me to try again to solve a graphic driver problem which spoiled my linux fun ever since the update to 7.10 :-).
Especially the relaxed, laid-back, objective (british? :D) way in which you are exploring the system and explaining your insight to the watchers.
I bet vids like this help to take some of the fear of trying linux from some windows users :-).
So thank you again and have a good time.
Max.
jwalden91lx | Dec 5, 2007 | Reply
I just watched the first video, and I can’t wait to see the other 2. Great job on this. I think this series alone has influenced my decision to build a ubuntu box, so a big “what he/she said” on the many positive comments already posted on this video series. They’re well deserved.
ripper81 | Dec 5, 2007 | Reply
Hello i am a linuxuser from germany (so sorry for the bad english).
I think the videos are great to get in touch with linux.
I think it would be great to take a look at Kubuntu Linux wich i am actually using.
It comes along with the KDE Desktop wich includes great Applications and a more Windows like usabillity.
I think it would be very cool to show this aspects of diversity wich is given the user with linux.
Best regards
Ripper81