Saturday, December 29, 2007

How to Convert Standard MIDI files to WAV Audio Format

Applications->Add/Remove Programs->and Install Timidity
from prompt: $timidity [midi_filename].mid -Ow -o [wav_filename].wav

You can also check out the manual: $man timidity
if you want to output to a different format.

Reference: Thanks to Ubuntu Philippine Team especially to Samhain13! :)

Monday, December 17, 2007

How to Install Ubuntu on a USB Flash Drive

Read this link: Live USB Drive,
this: Bootable USB,
and this: Making the USB Persistent

Note: Even it is stated to use ext2 filesystem for casper-rw, I partitioned the disk with ext3 for filesystem use.

Now you have Ubuntu-On-A-Stick! :)

Friday, December 7, 2007

Mplayer: Cannot find codec for audio format 0x56444152

I experienced this problem when playing VCD using command line: $mplayer -zoom -vo x11 -framedrop vcd://1 and it will output this:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Opening audio decoder: [libdv] Raw DV Audio Decoder
Unknown/missing audio format -> no sound
ADecoder init failed :(
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
Cannot find codec 'dvaudio' in libavcodec...
ADecoder init failed :(
ADecoder init failed :(
Cannot find codec for audio format 0x56444152.
Read DOCS/HTML/en/codecs.html!
Audio: no sound
Starting playback...
V: 0.0 0/ 0 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0
gnome_screensaver_control()
Exiting... (End of file)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This could be resolved in two ways:

1. $mplayer -vo x11 -zoom -framedrop vcd://n
where 'n' is the track or chapter (it should be 2 or greater).
-vo x11 is the video output since I'm using vesa driver
-zoom is the scaling of video so I could watch in fullscreen
-framedrop so the video and audio syncs.

2. $mplayer -gui -zoom -vo x11 vcd://n
where 'n' is the track or chapter
-gui the mplayer playback controls will show

This will play the VCD and an gnome-screensaver-control error will show. Ignore the error by clicking ok then right-click on mplayer screen select Open->Play VCD. enjoy! :)

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Adjusting Amarok's Buffer

edit /home/(username)/.kde/share/apps/amarok/xine-config and find the line: #engine buffers_audio_num_buffers:230. Instead of 230, put 10000 then uncomment the line by removing '#'. That's it!