May
21
Top 10 Linux Video Applications – NOT!
May 21, 2009 | By: UbuntuLinuxHelp | 8 Comments
Posted in Applications, Editorials
I recently read a Digg post "10 Free Apps that Turn your Ubuntu into a Video Studio" and it annoyed the heck out of me! Maybe I'm being too critical, but I don't see 10 top video applications in Linux (I'm an Ubuntu user). In fact, I don't even see ten productive, functional, Linux based video applications that I would use in a production environment. Maybe I'm a bit too outspoken, but in my opinion, the article that Digg post points to is not worth the pixels it's displayed with. Based on the numerous comments from diggers, I'd have to agree that they rightfully consider that post lame. Okay... Personal opinion rant over. :)
Criticism aside, I just Read more
May
20
Easily Manage Duplicate Files and Save Storage Space
May 20, 2009 | By: UbuntuLinuxHelp | 1 Comment
Posted in How To
Have you ever had several copies of the same file on your PC? I tend to make duplicates of files before I edit them, this is especially true with graphic or video files - even config files for that matter. That way, when I make serious mistakes, I can always go back to square one.
The only problem I have, is that there are several revisions of files wasting my drive space, files I've had for years, that I've never cleaned up. Time for some spring cleaning.
I can of course, manually search, compare and delete duplicate copies, but that would take me a few weeks to complete. Let's face it, if you were as messy with file copies as I was, you'd probably look for some automated tool. Using Google, I found "fdupes", which lead to several others on Wikipedia. Before I jump into fdupes, I just wanted to give mention some of the other duplicate file finders I found, as each of them had one unique benefit (in red type).
dupmerge: From their site "...Dupmerge reads a list of files from standard input (eg., as produced by "find . -print") and looks for identical files. When it finds two or more identical files, all but one are unlinked to reclaim the disk space and recreated as hard links to the remaining copy..."
dupmerge is not Read more
May
15
How to Use the Second Network Port on Your Computer
May 15, 2009 | By: UbuntuLinuxHelp | 11 Comments
Posted in Hands On, How To
The PC I use has two network (ethernet) ports in the back. For years I've always had one cable plugged into it, leaving the second (RJ45) port unused. Recently however there's been a second ISP provider added.
It got me thinking about the old days - When I was on dial-up and we used to "join" two modems together to improve our web surfing speed. This caused a spark as I realized that I could potentially increase my surfing speed by configuring both ethernet ports to appear as one connection (to my applications) - Meaning that the physical ports are combined to appear as one logical (interface) port to applications (such as Firefox, etc). I could also provide load balancing and fault tolerance to my PC's network functions. Doing so would allow my PC (Ubuntu 8.04) to manage the connection, and my applications to enjoy the faster Internet speeds.
This logical interface provides more than one benefit:
Fault tolerance, if one port or network (WAN) fails, the other is still working. This occurs in a graceful manner so that you don't have to tweak or configure settings when the failure occurs.
Load balancing, the OS will ensure that theres an even flow across both physical ethernet ports (via the single logical interface). The key benefit is that you can balance your traffic load between independent WAN networks (like 2 ISPs), even including other WiFi access points (used with the permission of the WiFi subscriber). You could even mix DLS, Cable or Read more
Apr
7
The Trouble With Webcams and Ubuntu Linux
April 7, 2009 | By: UbuntuLinuxHelp | 6 Comments
Posted in Editorials
Recently I ran into issues with using my webcam in Ubuntu. Specifically the video would freeze (or not appear at all) and the functionality was terrible (in that most features were not available). Needless to say, personally, I wish it would be something that the open source community could fix (I'm not a developer, so please forgive any incorrect opinions).
Here's the scenario...
Hardware:
- AMD 64Bit system.
- Logitech USB camera (Fusion).
Software:
- Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy).
- Flash LNX 9.0.152.0 upgraded to LNX 10,0,15,3 (during this post).
In my particular case, I discovered that when using Flash to connect to a video chat, I'd get a pop-up window asking which webcam to use. It was a simple matter to select the USB based cam, wich was given the name "0x046d" (for selection). Sometimes it would work, most of the time it did not. I also found that Skype connections were working all the time. However, video quality was not that great and there was almost none of the software features available (that were available to Windows users).
Missing features (that the camera supported) were:
- Face tracking (camera lens moves to keep your face in the center of the frame).
- Rightlight 2 Technology (this fixes low, uneven, or glaring light automatically).
- Built in mic (sometimes it worked, sometimes not).
Needless to say, I was a bit frustrated with the inconsistent performance in Ubuntu Linux. To be fair, I did test the camera on a Windows XP environment and found that it worked great and that all features were available (so I knew it was not because of poor webcam hardware). However, this in great part was facilitated by Read more
Mar
24
Building a Web Developer / Designer PC Using Ubuntu Linux – Revisited
March 24, 2009 | By: UbuntuLinuxHelp | 5 Comments
Posted in Applications, Hands On, How To
Recently I posted "Build a Web Developer PC and Enable Most Media Playback Using Ubuntu Linux" and received a few messages asking what other tools I use. To save me time with answering email messages that essentially contain the same information, and to help the maximum number of readers, I thought it would be a good follow up to that earlier post.
First off, there some other applications I use, namely:
xVidCap. This facilitates screen capturing video so that I can create tutorial videos. After which ffmpeg can be used to convert the captured video to flv format for web streaming. If you're interested, they have a couple instructional videos: Video 1 and Video 2. To install it, the command is:
sudo aptitude install xvidcap
Also, to be able to quickly find the differences between Read more
