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Linux Multimedia Hacks
MikeD writes "I just got my copy of the latest release in the O'Reilly's 'Hacks' series, "Linux Multimedia Hacks" by Kyle Rankin. If you are familiar with the other books in the 'Hack' series, this one will seem familiar." Read the rest of Mike's review.
Linux Multimedia Hacks
author
Kyle Rankin
pages
330
publisher
O'Reilly
rating
8
reviewer
MikeD
ISBN
0-596-10076-0
summary
Tips & Tools for Taming Images, Audio, and Video
There are 5 'Chapters', each focusing on a specific multimedia topic starting from the most basic/common and moving up the multimedia food chain. The chapters cover (in order) Images, Audio, Video, Broadcast media, and the Web. The hacks in each section are similarly arranged, usually starting with the simplest and moving to more complex issues. They helpfully put a little rating symbol by each hack indicating if it is for beginners, intermediate or advanced users. While that is a little simplistic, it does give you some hint at the complexity of that particular 'hack'.
Because this is a 'hack' book, it is really designed so you can look up the topic you want. For example in Chapter 3: Video, there is a "hack" explaining how to convert from one video format to another. If that is what you need to do, turn to hack 63 and follow along and you are done.
But they put a little extra effort into the layout and topics covered here and you *could* use this as a great introduction to a particular multimedia area as well.
Lets look at Chapter2: Audio for example. The first 'hack', number 13, is titled "Mix Your Audio for Perfect Sound. This hack begins by exploring the audio systems in your system, the hardware, the sources and such then finishes by introducing a couple of common tools for controlling your audio, aumix and alsamixer. The next 'hack', "Surround Yourself with Sound" goes into details on how to get sound out of your system. It discusses speakers, 5.1 surround sound and how to use the tools alsmixer, aplay and others to set up, test and ultimately enjoy the cool audio available while watching movies.
Together those two 'hacks' make a pretty basic introduction to PC audio under Linux. From there the audio hacks include format changing, ripping, burning CDs music management and much more. You really could start at the 13 and work your way through to hack 46 and have a very good understanding of audio, PC audio and how to get the most out of it on your Linux PC.
So it really is more than just a collection of hacks. It can lead you from the basics of screen capture ('hack' number 1), to image manipulation, animation, then move on to audio and video. In Chapter 4 they get into TV tuner cards, Myth TV, streaming audio and video, ripping to broadcasting.
Chapter 5, Web hacks is sort of the odd man out in this book. In some ways it is separate from the other four in that it is directed more towards the web, which is something that would require several whole books in itself to cover well. But they included a few ideas, like "Star in Your Own Reality TV Show (hack #97), that do relate to some of the prior material.
Over all this will be a very useful book to anyone who is new to multimedia, but even some more advanced users will find some interesting and useful ideas, I think. Well worth checking out."
You can purchase Linux Multimedia Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
There are 5 'Chapters', each focusing on a specific multimedia topic starting from the most basic/common and moving up the multimedia food chain. The chapters cover (in order) Images, Audio, Video, Broadcast media, and the Web. The hacks in each section are similarly arranged, usually starting with the simplest and moving to more complex issues. They helpfully put a little rating symbol by each hack indicating if it is for beginners, intermediate or advanced users. While that is a little simplistic, it does give you some hint at the complexity of that particular 'hack'.
Because this is a 'hack' book, it is really designed so you can look up the topic you want. For example in Chapter 3: Video, there is a "hack" explaining how to convert from one video format to another. If that is what you need to do, turn to hack 63 and follow along and you are done.
But they put a little extra effort into the layout and topics covered here and you *could* use this as a great introduction to a particular multimedia area as well.
Lets look at Chapter2: Audio for example. The first 'hack', number 13, is titled "Mix Your Audio for Perfect Sound. This hack begins by exploring the audio systems in your system, the hardware, the sources and such then finishes by introducing a couple of common tools for controlling your audio, aumix and alsamixer. The next 'hack', "Surround Yourself with Sound" goes into details on how to get sound out of your system. It discusses speakers, 5.1 surround sound and how to use the tools alsmixer, aplay and others to set up, test and ultimately enjoy the cool audio available while watching movies.
Together those two 'hacks' make a pretty basic introduction to PC audio under Linux. From there the audio hacks include format changing, ripping, burning CDs music management and much more. You really could start at the 13 and work your way through to hack 46 and have a very good understanding of audio, PC audio and how to get the most out of it on your Linux PC.
So it really is more than just a collection of hacks. It can lead you from the basics of screen capture ('hack' number 1), to image manipulation, animation, then move on to audio and video. In Chapter 4 they get into TV tuner cards, Myth TV, streaming audio and video, ripping to broadcasting.
Chapter 5, Web hacks is sort of the odd man out in this book. In some ways it is separate from the other four in that it is directed more towards the web, which is something that would require several whole books in itself to cover well. But they included a few ideas, like "Star in Your Own Reality TV Show (hack #97), that do relate to some of the prior material.
Over all this will be a very useful book to anyone who is new to multimedia, but even some more advanced users will find some interesting and useful ideas, I think. Well worth checking out."
You can purchase Linux Multimedia Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
"If you are familiar with...this will seem familiar"
Kind of self defining.
and a proper index of the book you can get a preview on the O'Reilly microsite for the book here
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
...is Linux Server Hacks. Just to "turbo mode ssh logins" hack (#67) is worth the price alone.
Oh, and, book plug!
The Army reading list
I know A'rpi from mplayer.
'Nuff said.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
That was a well written review!
The book sounds cool, I might go pick up a copy.
I am curious, as I rarely purchase linux related books, is there alot of distribution specific material? Or is it overly generic to avoid being tied to a certain setup?
For instance when dealing with the many tools i'm sure the book discusses, there could be KDE and GNOME specific implementations, as well as alot of differences on how you will find/install the tool depending on distribution. How is this sort of thing handled?
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
There are 5 'Chapters',
Because this is a 'hack' book,
here is a "hack"
I bet the author of the post does the little bendy bunny ears gesture with his hands when he speaks...
Most of the "hacks" described in the review seem to amount to "how to use these standard tools, which came with your distro, to do the task for which they were designed." Not really worthy of the title "hack" IMO...
rooooar
In some of the cases, a choice of different engines for use is provided. Sometimes, a change in an engine will crash the app! And there is no easy way to know this choice even exists.
I particularily appreciate the folks at http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ for a job well done.
But again, I fine Linux feels heavy, even on an AMD 2800+ Sempron processor with 512MB of RAM. On the other OS, it's all a snap.
Can someone tell me why http://www.vorbis.com/ is still not that popular?
I thought you were writing a haiku.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Linux Multimedia Hacks
Hopefully, no one else had the same initial reaction that I had, namely:
"Man, I hope the title doesn't perform double-duty as a description of the authors..."
All the multimedia hacks start with; "Download an unencumbered version of MPlayer and then Bogart yourself a copy of the Win32 codecs for WMA, Quicktime, Real and all the others. You can get them from the C:\Windows\System32 folder of your pirated copy of XP."
This sounds like an interesting book, and I'll probably buy it, but looking over the Table of Contents, this book is geared more toward Linux Multimedia Management (PVR, mp3s) than doing actual recording and capturing.
I'm a podcaster trying to figure out the best way to input mike/mixer into my linux laptop, and had the damnest time figuring out.
Mastering the software stuff is easy (relatively speaking). Much harder is figuring out how to get your hardware to work. About the best resource I've found for that is this usb device database . Under each multimedia device are user comments about how they made it work.
Also, a few months ago I reviewed a book, Digital Video Hacks. More about video production than linux, the book nonetheless a few things from a linux perspective. Highly recommended!
On another note, why hasn't anyone published a decent GIMP manual yet? The last book is a good three years old, and a lot has happened to gimp since then. I would love to see a Gimp Hacks book sometime. I could really use that!
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Amazon Has it cheaper than B & N. ($19.77 new, 13.12 used).
Expert Java EE Consulting
Wireless Hacks, that was a book largely composed of "hacks". Every other book I've seen has been a cookbook using tools as they are intended. The term "Cookbook" or "Tips" is much more accurate for these titles.
When Wireless Hacks came out, it was great, real hacks. When the next Hacks book came out, I rushed to the bookstore to take a look and find it was a lame and inaccurate title. When the third Hacks book came out, I didn't and still don't pay any attention.
The "Hacks" branding is effectively worthless, O'Reilly.
I also fondly remember that day. The voice that emerged from my speakers said:
"My name is Linux Torvalds and I pronounce Linux Lee-nooks"
And I'm like WTF? I thought Lin-ukks was a friggin atrocity to call my new Lie-nux installation. Now it's got nooks? This is just lue-duk-cruss.
-- I have fans? Wow.