GeeXboX is a free embedded Linux
Despite his tiny ISO image size, the distribution comes with a complete and automatic hardware detection, not requiring any driver to be added. It supports playback of nearly any kind of audio/video and image files and all known codecs and containers are shipped in, allowing playing them through various physical supports, either being CD, DVD, HDD, LAN or Internet.
GeeXboX also comes with a complete tool-chain that allows developers adding easily extra packages and features but that might also be used to give birth to many dedicated embedded Linux systems.
The curent version of GeeXBox is 1.2-beta1 with major changes of adding widescreens and HDTV screens support and adding X11 video acceleration for most graphic cards (Intel, nVidia, ATI, S3, SiS, VIA ...).
The whole distributions is now modularized to best detect your hardware and load ony what is needed. Many drivers have been added and installation has been completely reworked for better usability.
This beta version that can be downloaded here, also has been optimized for various platforms like EeePCs
Vamos is a very young project concentrating on being an automotive simulation framework with an emphasis on thorough physical modeling and good C++ design. Vamos includes a real-time, first-person, 3-D driving application.
It also includes a number of cool real-world locations, with tracks such as Germany’s Nurburgring and Japan’s Suzuka Circuit, among others. However, this won’t be a major draw card of authenticity just yet, as the graphics are still at a level comparable to a 286, and the cars resemble something more like what Postman Pat would drive. As a result, the project’s author is inviting anyone to contribute to the effort. Still, it looks promising, especially as parts of its code are being borrowed from another project.
For more info and download this game engine, feel free to visit here.
ArtistX 0.5 is Debian-based live DVD with a large collection of free audio, video and graphics software. It is a free live GNU/Linux DVD which turns a common computer into a full multimedia production studio. It is based on Debian GNU/Linux and contains nearly all available free audio, 2D and 3D graphics, and video software for the GNU/Linux computing platform.
ArtistX 0.5 is based on Debian Live software for creating live CDs and includes the 2.6.25 kernel, KDE 3.5, Compiz 0.7.7 and about 2,500 free multimedia software.
Main features:
- based on Debian Sid
- Kernel 2.6.25
- Compiz 0.7.7 from shame repository
- Debian multimedia packages
- KDE menu customization.
List of softwares included in DVD:
- 2D Graphic Software: Gimp, Inkscape, Nip2, Krita, Cinepaint, Synfig, Rawstudio, Skencil, Hugin.
- 3D Graphic softwares: Blender, Wings3D, Kpovmodeler + Povray 3.6, K3D.
- Video softwares: Cinelerra, Kino, Openmovieeditor, Kdenlive, Pitivi, Avidemux, Devede, and many others.
- Video and Music players: Mplayer, Helix Player, Videolan, Xine, Kaffeine, Kmplayer, LastFM and many others.
- Music software: PD and externals, Rosegarden, Ardour, TerminatorX, Cecilia/Csound, Gnusound, Mixxx and many others.
And, on the DVD you can find about 2500 multimedia softwares, practically everything made for the GNU/Linux platform.
Links for FTP, HTTP and torrents download can be found at Here.
GuitarPro, known as a Windows application, which is used to create music for guitar. Yes, I knew, but I never used it, as it is for Windows and not free software, and I didn't run Windows anymore since few months ago. So I try to search on web, and found TuxGuitar, the freeware alternative of GuitarPro for Linux. And again, this software is available for Windows, Macintosh too.
It is a wonderful and fun application programmed in Java to create, edit and play scores, like GuitarPro in Windows. TuxGuitar's features include the publisher of scores, the use of multitrack, autoscroll while playing, apply various effects (curve, slide, vibrations), manager of times, import and export of files gp3, gp4 and gp5, etc..
More info and download links can be reached at its site.
To install TuxGuitar, in its latest version, 1.0, we need some units, are these:
- sun-java5-jre Sun-java5-jre
- libswt3.2-gtk-jni Libswt3.2-GTK-jni
- libswt3.2-gtk-java Libswt3.2-GTK-Java
$ sudo aptitude install sun-java5-jre libswt3.2-gtk-jni libswt3.2-gtk-java $ Sudo aptitude install sun-java5-jre libswt3.2-gtk-jni libswt3.2-gtk-javaIt takes a minute, once completed, type this in terminal :
$ sudo aptitude install -f $ Sudo aptitude install-fAnd we continue to download the debian package for TuxGuitar:
$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/tuxguitar/tuxguitar-1.0-rc3-ubuntu-x86.deb $ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/tuxguitar/tuxguitar-1.0-rc3-ubuntu-x86.deb
Okay, then install it:
$ sudo dpkg -i tuxguitar-*.deb $ Sudo dpkg-i-tuxguitar *. deb
Now we remove the debian package, and we do not serve anything:
$ rm tuxguitar-*.deb $ Tuxguitar-rm *. deb
That's it! Ready to use.
Musix has released its first DVD. Musix GNU+Linux 1.0 R3 test5 Live-DVD and Live-CD are both testing versions produced on the basis of the stable version 1.0 R2. As you know, Musix 1.0 is Linux distro that based on Knoppix and Debian/Stable which focusing to multimedia work, especially music editing for musician. For complete list Linux distributions for audio or multimedia editing, you can read my last post about that.
Version 1.0 R3 test 5 solves several 1.0 R2's problems, among them, the "Inconsistent Filesystem Structure" bug after an improper shutdown and the SATA HD installation bug. English is now the default boot language and new functionalities were added, for instance: automount of CDs, DVDs and USB memories, or the "install" boot argument.
The goals of the making DVD distribution of this release are:
better language support, to include more education, video, graphic, and audio applications and to make a better general purpose system of course.
New packages on the Live-DVD: OpenOffice (75 languages), full KDE Desktop (63 languages), dozens of education apps (23 categories), a 75Mb Steinway Piano Soundfont, full printer and scanner support, amarok, scribus, cinelerra, kino, kdenlive, lives, freej, blender, inkscape, Linux Multimedia Studio, democracyplayer, vlc, mplayer, qdvdauthor, mandvd, Clam, canorus, Qcad, wengophone, a lot of games, gem, yafray, beryl, compiz, konversation, konserve, stellarium, nted, clamav, avscan, qemu, development packages, mozilla-firefox-locale (28 languages), manpages (23 languages), Linux 2.6.23-rt1 (when installed) and many more!
KDE is the default desktop for the DVD version because its great language support, but we encourage you to try the "Musix's" desktop: IceWM+Rox, it's light and functional, or Fluxbox. Also, Kdesktop can be used from IceWM+Rox if you want a "Windows like" desktop.
You can download the ISO of this Live DVD release at Here.
A first release candidate of version ML-5.0.7 of the StartCom MultiMedia Edition codenamed "Kessem" has been released. This test release introduces a new low-latency 2.6.23 kernel in addition to many, many updated packages and version upgrades.
What's New?
This OS is now much more compatible and in par with the StartCom AS-5 series (aka RHEL 5) what the basic underlying system and desktop packages concerns. This includes a switch from Xgl to AIGLX for compiz, but Firefox and Thunderbird have been updated to more recent 2.0.0.10 and 2.0.0.5 releases. The desktop is polished and boosts a huge Sound and Video section.
Most audio and video manipulation software has been updated to current versions and others were added. For example this release features Ardour 2, Qsampler (Linux Sampler), Qsynth, VST plug-in support, a new selection of sound fonts and a new low-latency kernel modified with realtime preemption patches to specially support audio production studios. Of course all the other well known programs like VLC, Rosegarden, Muse and the vast selection of midi, synthesizers are still here as well.
Download this First RC of StartCom MultiMedia Edition 5.0.7 at Here.
Quicktime 4 Linux was the first convenient way to read and write uncompressed Quicktime movies on Linux. Today Quicktime 4 Linux is intended mainly for content creation and uncompressed movies. These usually arise during the production phase and not the distribution phase of a movie. It has improvements in colormodel support, bit depth, accuracy, reliability, and codecs, while not stressing economy.
Quicktime 4 Linux is the foundation for many of the features of Cinelerra. It includes several front ends to encoders and decoders which are used by applications directly.
Included in Quicktime for Linux is a front end for the libdv engine. This front end was started when libdv was really crude. Since then, libdv has gotten better but the abstraction layer remains.
A parallel JPEG engine using libjpeg is implemented with a front end. This uses 2 processors for field based JPEG compression and 1 processor for frame based compression. It also supports some common marker operations.
COLORSPACE CONVERSION
A general colorspace converter implements colorspace conversion with nearest neighbor scaling for the large number of nonstandard colorspaces that Cinelerra uses.
Quicktime 4 Linux reads and writes some AVI files. AVI support has grown over the years, since this is of course the standard on Linux, but is continuously evolving since AVI is not consistent. Currently it reads and writes reasonably compatible AVI files less than or greater than 2GB. The AVI mode supports MJPG, DV, and some compressed codecs.
Be aware of one thing: Quicktime for Linux won't read any of the movies you download from the internet. Quicktime is a wrapper for many different kinds of compression formats. What you knew as "Quicktime 4", "Quicktime 5", "Quicktime 6", are really different distributions of compression formats. The codecs its support are mainly uncompressed.
You can download QuickTime 4 Linux at here.
Heroine Virtual Ltd. presents an advanced content creation system for Linux. Cinelerra takes what normally is a boring server - studied in computer science classrooms, hidden in back offices - and turns it into a 50,000 watt flamethrower of multimedia editing.
That's right guys. Unlike most of the Linux solutions out there, Cinelerra requires no emulation of proprietary operating systems, no commercial add-ons, no banner advertisements, no corporate dependencies, no terrorists, just a boring old Linux box.
Cinelerra does primarily 3 main things: capturing, compositing, and editing audio and video with sample level accuracy. It's a seamless integration of audio, video, and still photos rarely experienced on a web server.
If you want to make movies, you just want to defy the establishment, you want the same kind of compositing and editing suite that the big boys use, on the world's most efficient UNIX operating system, it's time for Cinelerra.
Until recently Cinelerra has been confined to hardcore Linux users who didn't mind rolling their own. An offshoot of the main project known as Cinelerra CV has made great improvements in both the stability of this prog and availability through package management in various distros.
I have been trying it out for a couple of months now in both Linux Mint 4.0 and Ubuntu Studio 7.10, using the Cinelerra-Generic package with openGL support. Video newbies who've never used a NLE Editor before will find this program a little daunting, I strongly recommend downloading the well-written manual and browsing it first. The GUI of Cinelerra is unlike anything I've ever seen, used with Compiz it is quite attractive once you get used to it.
It has 4 main windows consisting of a timeline, a viewer for editing clips, resources window and compositor window to display the output as formatted, It will import many types of clips but some (MPEG-2, DVD) require indexing with a 3rd party indexing tool. (I use "Seven-Gnomes" available at the Cinelerra CV site in the Links). I can directly import video clips in MJPEG format from my Canon Powershot S5 Camera and edit them with ease in Cinelerra, I then export the project as RawDV or DVavi and convert them to DVD or MPEG-4 with another program like WinFF, AviDemux or DeVeDe. Cinelerra will export to other formats but in my opinion there aren't as many options as I'd like to render the final project directly. There are a good assortment of transitions and filters to choose from and LADSPA Audio plugins can also be added if needed.
In the event that the program crashes it usually is kind enough to create a backup so you can restart and reload your work. I am hesitant to compare Cinelerra to Adobe or Vegas because it does what I want and does it well so I see no need to peg it as an alternative to anything in Windows. I believe it succeeds on it's own merits.
NOTE: Very helpful if you visit The Cinelerra CV site, all instructions to get packages for different distros can be found there.
