Ubuntu For Free

I burn a few DVDs, and I’ve tried a few programs for turning a movie (.mpg, etc) into a DVD video structure. The latest disappointment so far has been DeVeDe.

It looks wonderful. It seems to support every feature I need. This includes permitting the user to define pan and scan versus letterboxing options, even skewing the aspect ratio for the very sick and twisted.

It allowed me use multiple video files to create one title. That’s important. Unfortunately, I was never able to view the output.

I forced a re-encode, which was a nice option, hoping to get an idea of the encoding quality, speed, and to thoroughly test it. Here’s where DeVeDe failed. Upon the 4th file of 5 it became stuck encoding at 76%.

I tried again using the same source .mpg files, and this time it became stuck at a different percentage in a different file. To me, that seems like a programming logic issue, and not a problem with the source data. I haven’t found a solution yet, but with so many alternatives I’m not spending much time on it, considering that while it was working, it seemed slow in comparison to others.

Check back for more multimedia related reviews.

My friend’s ZeroXR and schpenke recommended a nice application called Tunapie when I queried for a suitable application to watch Internet TV and Radio via Shoutcast streams.

Version 1.3 is available for install via the Ubuntu repositories using

sudo apt-get install tunapie

I suggest installing it first, and then upgrading to v2.0

To do that, download the tarball from SourceForge and then extract it.

From the shell’s prompt in the downloaded folder, issue the following commands to finish the upgrade:

sudo sh install.sh --adult
sudo cp tunapie /usr/bin/tunapie


You’ll then find it in the Multimedia folder on your menu.