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from: http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=103508&highlight=

Multimedia packages: the “PLF” repository for mp3 and mp4 ripping and other tasks

In case you do not find the packages twolame and libtwolame in your repository, thanks to Mustakim of Malaysia (http://mustakim.blogster.com/mandriva-2009-how-to-urpmi-121008153900 ), you can the following:


urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist 'http://plf.zarb.org/mirrors/$RELEASE.$ARCH.list'
urpmi --auto-update

urpmi vlc dvd+rw-tools libdvdcss2 libdvdnav4 libdvdread4 vlc-plugin-dvdnav faac gstreamer0.10-faac libfaac0 libquicktime-faac faad2 libfaad2_0 xine-faad libquicktime-faad mencoder wine playonlinux umtsmon ffmpeg

urpmi java-1.6.0-sun-plugin java-1.6.0-sun totem-mozilla mozilla-plugin-vlc wmwebcam webcam_server camorama kmplayer mplayer dkms-squashfs dkms-squashfs-lzma hfsplusutils hfsutils

The above will ensure that you have a lot of the multimedia codec software you will need for mp3 and mp4 playback. It will load vlc player, ffmpeg, faac, faad and also provide access to “lame” packages in the plf repository which is different from Mandriva official repositories. Once the above commands have been run, the plf repository opens up for use in
MCC > Software Management > All (select in top left drop down)
Search for lame again and this time the plf version should be available.
I am still unable to use the totem Gnome default media player. Apparently some codec is missing. You can try your luck with win32-codecs-1.9-1plf2009.0.i586.rpm which should now come up in search:
MCC > Software Management > All (select in top left drop down)
Enter win32 in search window . This will bring up win32-codecs-1.9-1plf2009.0.i586.rpm. Select the package and then Apply to download.
You could also download gnome-mplayer. This provides a Gnome GUI for the mplayer you have already downloaded through Mustakim's lines above. Another excellent player is kaffeine. All this can be downloaded through MCC > Software Management > All (select in top left drop down)

With kaffeine, vlc and gnome-mplayer you can play any media file mp3, mp4, avi, mpg, dat and so on. ffmpeg, faac, faad are other key packages that you need for mp4 encoding (ripping) and decoding (playing). If you have followed the above sequence you have them all.

To play multimedia files using gstreamer-based players like Totem you also need gstreamer plugin. Search for gstreamer after MCC > Software Management > All (select in top left drop down). From the entire list of gstreamer plugin select what you need. You could download the whole set after factoring in compatibility of different versions. In any case you will get an incompatibility message and will have to deselect the offending package.

mp4 playing on PC
This was by far the toughest challenge. Without the plf repository mentioned above and Mustakim's blog, I could not have surmounted this challenge. No linux player totem, kmplayer / gnome-mplayer, vlc, kaffeine will play mp4 unless faad and ffmpeg work well. Similarly encoding to mp4 which is vital for iPod video play is just not possible without faac.
This is because both decoding and encoding the AAC audio format usually used in MP4 files is covered by a patent in the U.S., so Mandriva cannot safely include the faac / faad tools in its official repositories. Using these tools in the U.S. without a valid patent license is illegal. The same concern applies to most other packages in the PLF repositories. There are also copyright issues in at least the U.S. and E.U. regarding the 'libdvdcss2' and 'win32-codecs' packages.

Capturing Video from my Sony DV Handycam DCR TRV 19E and converting to mp4
You may have Kino already loaded as part of the distribution's packages. With this you can create .dv, .avi (type 1 and type 2) files from feed coming from your handycam. You need to run Kino as root if you encounter any problems.
Converting from avi to mp4 and a host of other conversions
Download handbrake_0_9_3_1_i586_rpm_zip_17059.zip from http://omertron.com/pch/node/73
Unzip and run urpmi HandBrake-0.9.3-1.i586.rpm from terminal as root
Handbrake should appear in Applications > Sound & Video. Run Handbrake
Select a Source file and Destination files and let rip. You can experiment with H264 as well as MPEG-4 (FFMPEG) Video codec to see what works best for you. I am yet to try out other conversions but this seems to be a conversion jack-knife.

iPod synchronisation – music and video
MCC>Configure media sources for software install and updates
Select non-free backports, (and main backports and contrib backports as well if you cant find banshee 1.41. Be sure to unselect them after this operation to prevent unwanted updates that will make your system unstable.
MCC > Software Management > All (select in top left drop down). Select the set of packages for Banshee 1.41 - banshee, banshee-ipod, banshee-mtp, banshee-mirage. Apply and download.
Connect your iPod. Autoplay will throw up the Banshee Option. Select the option with Banshee
Continue just as you would with iTunes
Banshee will synchronise your music and videos. Other players like Rythmbox, Amarok etc will not synchronize your mp4 videos. However Banshee will not synchronize Photos

iPod synchronisation – photos
MCC > Software Management > All (select in top left drop down)
Search for gtkpod
Select and download gtkpod
Connect your iPod
Autoplay will kick in showing you options
Select Open gtkpod
Your iPod should show up in the gtkpod iPod directory structure. If it does not the use Load iPod and select your iPod model and fill out the Options
Edit > Repository / iPod Options
Enter /media/”your iPod name” in iPod mount point. You can verify this to see if where your iPod is actually mounted.
Create an iPod database directory and enter the path in iTunes DB backup. The default here is a directory in root which will not open later on when you want to save the photos to your iPod because the programme will not have permissions to mess with the root directory. I found this to be critical. This can be bypassed by starting gtkpod as root. However you might ending up messing up with the Linux file system.
Select photos and wait a few seconds. The photos already in your iPod will show up
Select “Album” and then “Add Album”. You will need to name the album for your iPod.
Select “Image” and then “Add Images”. Follow intuitively
Save Changes and Eject iPod and you are done – your iPod is now loaded with the photos you have added.

That completes my story of transition to Mandriva Linux 2009 from Windows Home Premium on my Dell Inspiron 1525 machine with all my Devices for Work and Play working with Linux. Victory Declared.

If you have the same hardware as mine. This article could get you going immediately with minimum fuss. You will need to experiment a bit around the above approach if your hardware is different.

Now are you ready for Linux?
Ravikumar Achanta

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Joined: 11 Jan 2009
Posts: 13

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 7:02 am Post subject: Eliminating Windows from Dell Insp. 1525- A Williamson adds Reply with quote
Couple of notes: you could link to
http://wiki.mandriva.com/2009.0_Synchronization for instructions on
synchronization - as noted there, I find KitchenSync rather easier to
work with than multisync-gui (you don't have to manually create the
Evolution configuration, for instance). The page has instructions for
Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Nokia devices. As I did all the packaging
and documentation for the synchronization stuff I'm happy it works for
you! Regarding one change I made - installing task-wm5sync-gnome
automatically installs task-wm5sync-common, there's no need to manually
select both.

The instructions you got for adding PLF repositories were a bit wrong, I
corrected them. They also install quite a long list of packages, some of
which seem a bit odd, like 'wine' and 'playonlinux' which you'd only
need for playing Windows games, they're not to do with media playback at
all. You could alternatively link to http://easyurpmi.zarb.org , which
is a nice web front end for adding repositories, including PLF.

Totem is a gstreamer-based player, so it should work with the
appropriate gstreamer plugins enabled. I edited that part a bit for you.
What's going on here is different multimedia playback frameworks. Take
faad, for instance.

Let's look at all the packages related to faad:

faad2
faad2-xmms
gstreamer0.10-faad
libfaad2-devel
libfaad2-static-devel
libfaad2_0
libquicktime-faad
xine-faad

libfaad2_0 is the package which contains the actual decoding-AAC code.
the -devel packages you can ignore, they're for people building code
only. faad2 is an actual standalone command-line decoder app.
gstreamer0.10-faad is a layer between the actual decoding library -
libfaad2_0 - and the gstreamer multimedia framework. For any player that
uses Gstreamer as its playback framework, this is what you need to make
it work; it's not just enough to have libfaad2_0. faad2-xmms is the
plugin for XMMS to make it work. The other two are similar:
libquicktime-faad is the interface layer for libquicktime, so any
libquicktime-based application would need it (I don't know what these
are...), and xine-faad is the layer for the xine multimedia system, so
any xine-based player - like older versions of Kaffeine, or xine-ui -
would need this one installed.

Finally, some apps just build the code into themselves - so you need the
actual package for that app from PLF before it'll work. So there's
several different things you might have to do to make AAC decoding work,
depending on the app:

If it builds the code into itself, you just install the version of the
app from PLF: e.g. mplayer

If it interfaces with libfaad directly, install libfaad2_0

If it's gstreamer-based, installed gstreamer0.10-faad

If it's xine-based, install xine-faad

this is kinda the same for any other codec handled with plugins: what
package is needed depends on how the player you're using works. If
you're not short on disk space it's probably easiest just to install
everything with the key phrase in its name.