My greatest pleasant surprise of installing KDE, was the improved performance. The core system seems extremely refined, fast, and immediately responsive.

Sometimes it’s so frustrating that I almost want to give up and logout and switch to the KDE 3.5 session, but instead I hop on IRC in Konversation and look for help in one of the channels. So far, it’s been an experience. Somewhat of a struggle, but I think I’ll keep trying.

1. Miro – instant access to recorded video from internet sources such as Google Video, YouTube, etc. Formerly known as DemocracyTV player, this gets you relevant video news in an instant.
2. Transkode – transKode I use to convert my OGG and FLAC files to MP3 for use on my Rio Carbon. This might not be as essential for everyone else, but there’s definitely some divergence as far as the best convertor, and I really think transKode needs the recognition it deserves for expertly accomplishing such a task.
3. amarok – It’s better than kaffeine. It’s a little slow, but is completely feature packed. It’s able to get ID3 tag info from MusicBrainz, for example is a feature which I have really been enjoying.
4. kmymoney – If you need to keep up with your money on something other than your bank’s page, this is a great, free way to do it. It is an excellent open source alternative to the major commercial software, which has become more of a marketing vehicle for other products.
5. inkscape – a scalable vector graphics editor. Use this program to draw using vector graphics, Inkscape is much more than a bitmap editor. If you’re familiar with Macromedia/Adobe Fireworks, then you’ll have an easy transition into Inkscape. While the interface is not identical, much of the concepts are the same.
6. ksquirrel – a quicker replacement for the included GwenView. I find GwenView notoriously slow, so I choose ksquirrel instead.
7. BasKet note pads – Integrates into Kontact, and allows you to work with notepads. I consider this an awesome alternative to Microsoft’s OneNote application. It’s superior to kNotes or even Tomboy.
8. Tellico – If you’ve got a collection of anything, and want to track that collection’s information, this is the best software to use for documenting that collection.
9. Quanta+ is an impeccable Web Development suite. It features integrated real time previews, syntax highlighting for several different languages, project management, and templates.
10. AllTray is there for you when you want to iconize a piece of software. I’ll use it to remove clutter caused by the bittornado windows.
11. Moblock is this issue’s bonus. It’s just good layer of protection to keep your computer away from remote prying eyes.
12. XSane is great for the ability to perfectly scan. It seems to be an often overlook function during conversations, however if you have a need to scan from paper sources, this program does a bang up job.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the Ubuntu repositories, so I had to compile it. However, it was a lot easier than I had anticipated. I did have to compile one dependency, Taglib, and that was even easier.

Here’s the break down of the steps I went through, including taglib.

change to the folder where transkode was downloaded

cd /home/vmadmin/Downloads/transkode-0.7beta/

run the program to extract transkode. i used arK because it was easier than looking at a man page. i opened konquer in the current window using

konqueror $PWD&

change to source folder

cd transkode/

configure the setup

./configure

make the components

make

install the app

sudo make install

cleanup the source directory

make clean

download taglib

change to download folder

uncompress taglib

tar xzf taglib-1.4.tar.gz

change to the source folder

cd taglib-1.4/

configure the setup

./configure

make the components

make

install the components

sudo make install

cleanup

make clean

remove anything left behind

rm -f -R transkode-0.7beta/
rm -f -R taglib-1.4/


Some of it’s features include:

• Easily take all sort of notes
• Collect research results and share them
• Centralize your project data and reuse it
• Quickly organize your toughts in idea boxes
• Keep track of your information in a smart way
• Make intelligent To Do lists

The website is very feature packed, and offers several screen shots.

To install in Kubuntu, simply use

sudo apt-get install basket

Installation was a snap. I downloaded a pre-packed .DEB file from GetDeb although the installation instructions appeared simple enough, I chose to use my regular method of installing a .deb in KDE  (because I use Kubuntu) via right clicking in Konqueror and selecting Package -> Install Package.

The program permits a broad range of options and formats for the user, and directly requests the desired output format. It expertly handles 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios.

Where it needs help is in localization. Even after selecting the English language for the program, throughout the rest of the user’s experience, the application still presents the user with many prompts, labels, titles, etc, in something other than English.

It’s also in need of volunteers for documentation as evidenced by the gaping void of a help file of any form.

Because the program’s does perform so well, I’d like to see some more community support for this application to improve on the areas that it does need more development.

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.