A.3 Multimedia

The following section introduces the most popular multimedia applications for Linux. Get to know media players, sound editing solutions, and video editing tools.

amaroK

The amaroK media player handles various audio formats and plays the streaming audio broadcasts of radio stations on the Internet. The program handles all file types supported by the sound server acting as a back-end—currently aRts or GStreamer. Find more information about amaroK at amarok.kde.org.

Audacity

Audacity is a powerful, free sound editing tool. Record, edit, and play any Ogg Vorbis or WAV file. Mix tracks, apply effects to them, and export the results to WAV or Ogg Vorbis. Find more information about Audacity at audacity.sourceforge.net.

Grip

Grip provides CD player functionalities for the GNOME desktop. It supports CDDB lookups for track and album data. Find more information at www.nostatic.org/grip/.

Helix Banshee

Helix Banshee is a music management and playback application for the GNOME desktop. With Helix Banshee, import CDs, sync your music collection to an iPod, play music directly from an iPod, create playlists with songs from your library, and create audio and MP3 CDs from subsets of your library. For more information, refer to GNOME User Guide.

Kaffeine

Kaffeine is a versatile multimedia application supporting a wide range of audio and video formats including Ogg Vorbis, WMV, MOV, and AVI. Import and edit play lists of various types, create screen shots, and save media streams to your local hard disk. Find more information about Kaffeine at kaffeine.sourceforge.net.

KAudiocreator

KAudioCreator is a lean CD ripper application. If configured accordingly, KAudioCreator also generates playlist files for your selection that can be used by players like amaroK, XMMS, or Helix Banshee. Read more about using KAudioCreator in KDE User Guide or go to www.icefox.net/programs/?program=KAudioCreator.

kdetv

A TV viewer and recorder application for the KDE desktop supporting analog TV. Find more information about kdetv at www.kdetv.org.

KsCD

KsCD is a neat little CD player application for the KDE desktop. Its user interface very much resembles that of a normal hardware CD player, guaranteeing ease of use. KsCD supports CDDB, enabling you to get any track and album information from the Internet or your local file system. Find more information at docs.kde.org/en/3.3/kdemultimedia/kscd.

K3b

K3b is a multitalented media creation tool. Create data, audio, or video CD and DVD projects by dragging and dropping. Find more information about K3b at www.k3b.org. You can also refer to our K3b chapter.

LilyPond

LilyPond is a free music sheet editor. Because the input format is text-based, you can use any text editor to create note sheets. Users do not need to tackle any formatting or notation issues, like spacing, line-breaking, or polyphonic collisions. All these issues are automatically resolved by LilyPond. It supports many special notations like chord names and tablatures. The output can be exported to PNG, TeX, PDF, PostScript, and MIDI. Find more information about LilyPond at lilpond.org.

MainActor

MainActor is a fully fledged video authoring software. Because there is a Windows version of MainActor, transition from Windows is easy. Find more information about MainActor at www.mainactor.com.

MPlayer

MPlayer is a movie player that runs on several systems. Find more information about MPlayer at www.mplayerhq.hu.

MusE

MusE's goal is to be a complete multitrack virtual studio for Linux. Find more information about MusE at www.muse-sequencer.org.

Noteedit

Noteedit is a powerful score editor for Linux. Use it to create sheets of notes and to export and import scores to and from many formats, such as MIDI, MusicXML and LilyPond. Find more information about Noteedit at developer.berlios.de/projects/noteedit.

Rhythmbox

Rhythmbox is a powerful, multitalented media player for the GNOME desktop. It allows you to organize and browse your music collection using playlists and even supports Internet radio. Find more information about Rhythmbox at www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox.

Rosegarden

Rosegarden is a free music composition and editing environment. It features an audio and MIDI sequencer and a score editor. Find more information about Rosegarden at rosegardenmusic.com.

Sound Juicer

Sound Juicer is a lean CD ripper application for the GNOME desktop. Find more information about Sound Juicer at www.burtonini.com/blog/computers/sound-juicer.

Totem

Totem is a movie player application for the GNOME desktop. It supports Shoutcast, m3u, asx, SMIL, and ra playlists, lets you use keyboard controls, and plays a wide range of audio and video formats. Find more information about Totem at www.gnome.org/projects/totem.

tvtime

tvtime is a lean TV viewer application supporting analog TV. Find more information about tvtime, including a comprehensive usage guide, at tvtime.sourceforge.net.

xawtv and motv

xawtv is a TV viewer and recorder application supporting analog TV. motv is basically the same as xawtv, but with a slightly different user interface. Find more information about the xawtv project at linux.bytesex.org/xawtv.

xawtv4

xawtv4 is a successor of the xawtv application. It supports both analog and digital audio and video broadcasts. For more information, refer to linux.bytesex.org/xawtv.

Xine

Xine is a multimedia player that plays CDs, DVDs, and VCDs. It interprets many multimedia formats. For more information, refer to xinehq.de.

XMMS

XMMS is the traditional choice for multimedia playback. It is focused on music playback, offering support for CD playback and Ogg Vorbis files. Users of Winamp should find XMMS comfortable because of its similarity. Find more information about XMMS at www.xmms.org.

zapping

A TV viewer and recorder application for the GNOME desktop supporting analog TV. Find more information about Zapping at zapping.sourceforge.net.