Sound Applications

Sound devices on Linux are supported by drivers forming a sound system. With the current Red Hat kernel, sound support is implemented by the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) system. ALSA replaces the free version of the Open Sound System used in previous releases, as well as the original built-in sound drivers (see Chapter 32). You can find more about ALSA at www.alsa-project.org.

Due to licensing and patent issues, Red Hat Linux has removed support for MP3 files. MP3 playback capability has been removed from multimedia players like XMMS and naotum. As an alternative to MP3, you can use Ogg Vorbis compression for music files (www.vorbis.com).

Note

Linux has become a platform of choice for many professional-level multimedia tasks such as generating computer-generated images (CGI) and animation for movie special effects, using such demanding software as Maya and Softimage. Linux graphic libraries include those for OpenGL, MESA, and SGI.

Many sound applications are currently available for GNOME, including sound editors, MP3 players, and audio players. You can use the GNOME CD Player to play music CDs and the GNOME sound recorder to record sound sources. Check the software map at www.gnome.org for current releases. A variety of applications are also available for KDE, including a media player (Kaiman), a mixer (KMix), an media player (Kaboodle), and a CD player (Kscd). Check apps.kde.com for recent additions. Several X Window System–based multimedia applications are installed with most distributions. These include XMMS and Xplaycd, CD music players, and Xanim, an animation and video player. Currently, a software repository for sound samples, open source applications, and articles is available at www.opensound.org.

Red Hat features the XMMS multimedia player, the GNOME CD Player, the GNOME Sound Recorder, and the GNOME Volume Control in the Sound and Video menu. The Extra Sound and Video menus list several KDE applications, including KMidi, Kaboodle, and Noatun.

The Open Sound System (OSS) site provides an extensive listing of available multimedia software at www.opensound.com/ossapps.html. Here you can find digital audio players, mixers, MP3 and MPEG players, and even speech tools. The Sound & Midi Software for Linux site currently at linux-sound.org holds links to Web and FTP sites for many sound applications. You can also download a copy of RealPlayer, the Internet streaming media player, from www.real.com. Be sure to choose RealPlayer for Unix, and as your OS, select Linux 2.x (libc i386) RPM.

CD Burners

Several CD Writer programs that can be used for CD music and MP3 writing (burners and rippers) are available from apps.kde.com. These include KreateCD, CD-Rchive, and KonCD. For GNOME, you can use cd-rec and GNOME Toaster. All use mkisofs, cdrecord, and cdda2wav CD writing programs, which are installed as part of the Red Hat distribution. Make sure that any CD-R, CD-RW, or CD-ROM drives that are IDE drives are installed as SCSI drives (see Chapter 30).

Table 12-3: Multimedia Applications

Application	Description
GTV	GNOME MPEG video player
Xine	Multimedia player for video, DVD, and audio
GNOME-tv	TV tuner
aKtion	KDE video player
Kscd	Music CD player
Kaboodle	A media player
GNOME CD Player	CD Player
GNOME Sound Recorder	Sound recorder
XMMS	CD Player
Xplaycd	Music CD player
Noatun	KDE multimedia player
Xanim	Animation and video player
RealPlayer	RealMedia and RealAudio streaming media (www.real.com)
KReateCD	KDE CD writing interface for cdrecord, mkisofs, and cdda2wav
KonCD	KDE CD burner and ripper
GNOME Toaster	GNOME CD burner

Video Applications

Several projects are under way to provide TV, video, DVD, and DTV support for Linux (see Table 12-4). The site linuxtv.org provides detailed links to DVD, digital video broadcasting (DVB), and multicasting. The site also provides downloads of many Linux video applications.

Access to current DVD and media players is provided at dvd.sourceforge.net. Here you will find links for players like Movietime, Mplayer, VideoLan, Oggle, and Xine. The VideoLan project (www.videolan.org) offers network streaming support for most media formats, including mpeg4 and mpeg2. It includes a multimedia player, VLC, that can work on any kind of system. Xine is a multipurpose video player for Linux/Unix systems that can play video, DVD, and audio disks. See xinehq.de for more information. For DVD transcoding and Divx support, check the DVD::rip project.

DVD development efforts were initially supported by the Linux Video and DVD Project (LiViD). The development of an open source DVD player has been hampered by the concerns and restrictions of the MPAA and their control over the DVD decoding software (an officially licensed player is under development). Information about efforts to develop Linux DVD software can be had at www.opendvd.org. None of the open source software hosted at SourceForge performs CSS decryption of commercial DVDs.

For KDE, several video applications are available or currently under development, including video players (aKtion and Noatun). Check apps.kde.com for downloads. Currently available or under development for GNOME are TV tuners (Gnomevision and Gnome-tv), a video player (Gnome-Video), and a video editor (trinity). Check www.gnome.org.

Table 12-4: Video and DVD Projects and Sites

Projects	Sites
linuxtv.org	Links to video, TV, and DVD sites: linuxtv.org
Xine	Xine video player: xinehq.de
DVD players	dvd.sourceforge.net
VideoLan	Network multimedia streaming: www.videolan.org
DVD::rip	DVD transcoding and Divx software: www.exit1.org/dvdrip/