Subtitle manipulation tools for Linux

By Razvan T. Coloja on February 07, 2008 (7:00:00 PM) @ http://archive09.linux.com/feature/125978

Subtitles may not mean much for the English-speaking part of the world, but for the rest of us, they are the difference between truly enjoying a movie or just watching the screen, trying to decipher the events. While Windows has a nice variety of tools to manipulate subtitles, Linux applications too can accomplish such tasks. From editing to ripping to converting, here is a list of some useful tools.

Turn on Bash Smart Completion

Image by Kai Hendry via Flickr

Posted by Carthik @ http://embraceubuntu.com/

The Bash shell has this sweet feature where you can use the TAB key to auto-complete certain things. For example, when I am in my home directory, the following command:
$cd Do[TAB-key]
will automatically yield:
$cd Documents

If you are an absolute novice, like I was, not so long ago, discovering tab completion in the terminal can make you go “Wow!”. Wait till you hear the rest now

Though you can use the TAB key to complete the names of files and directories, by default the completion is pretty “dumb”. If you have already typed $cd D you would expect that the tab key would cause only the directory names to be completed, but if I try it on my machine, the tab completion tool uses filenames too.

Now, don’t despair! There is now a smart bash tab completion trick you can use. Smart completion even complete the arguments to commands!!

To enable smart completion, edit your /etc/bash.bashrc file. Uncomment the following lines, by removing the # in the beginning of the lines:

#if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
# . /etc/bash_completion
#fi


Now you can use tab completion to power your way through commands.

You can even extend bash smart completion to your own favourite commands by using /etc/bash_completion, the “complete” utility and /etc/bash_completion.d . Explaining the nitty-gritty is beyond me. I refer you to the Debian Administration gurus for more information regarding smarter bash completion.

Source: http://embraceubuntu.com/2006/01/28/turn-on-bash-smart-completion/

Combine MP4/M4V Files in Linux/Ubuntu

by Andrew Martin @http://www.thetechrepo.com/

You may want to combine multiple mp4/m4v video files into one continuous video. In order to do this, you need to install the gpac library of programs onto Ubuntu. Open up Terminal and run:

 

sudo apt-get install gpac

 

This will install the gpac library. One of the programs included with it is MP4Box, which you can use to concatenate the video files. If you are using 64 bit Linux or get an error like MP4Box: error while loading shared libraries: libgpac.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory, then you need to link the shared library to /usr/lib:

 

sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib64/libgpac.so /usr/lib/libgpac.so

 

Now to convert your files, add -cat filename.mp4 for each of your files to this command, with -new combinedfile.mp4 as your output, combined file:

 

MP4Box -cat vid1.mp4 -cat vid2.mp4 -cat vid3.mp4 -new combinedfile.mp4

 

Once the process finishes, your combined video file will be in combinedfile.mp4.

source: http://www.thetechrepo.com/main-articles/530-combine-mp4m4v-files-in-linuxubuntu

Arch Linux step by step installation

Written by pirat9  @ http://www.unixmen.com

Arch Linux (or Arch, pronounced /ˈɑrtʃ/ ^]) is a Linux distribution intended to be lightweight and simple. The design approach of the development team focuses on simplicity, elegance, code correctness and minimalism. “Simplicity”, according to Arch, is defined as “…without unnecessary additions, modifications, or complications..” and is defined from a developer standpoint, rather than a user standpoint.

Inspired by CRUX, another minimalist distribution, Judd Vinet started Arch Linux in March 2002. Vinet led the project until 1 October 2007, when he stepped down due to lack of time, transferring control of the project to Aaron Griffin.

First  Step  is to Download  the  Iso  image  from  Arch  Mirrors  http://www.archlinux.org/download/

AwOken icon set version 2.0 is released | PPA Ubuntu

Written by M. Zinoune @ http://www.unixmen.com/

Awoken icon set is one of the most popular icons set for Gnome , success is mostly due to the elegance and great achievement and even the ability to customize them.  A new version of Awoken has been released today, this new version added new icons, new icon editor, a PPA for ubuntu,  Natty support and more.

How to install Photoshop in Ubuntu and LinuxMint

Written by Guest Post- Convexity @http://www.unixmen.com/

Photoshop is an important tool to many of us here. There are people who stick with Windows or Mac for gaining a native environment to use this tool on. For Linux users, there is Gimp, the perfect alternative to Photoshop . However, there are some users that are used for photoshop and they can not switch to Gimp for some reason..

Using wine to install Photoshop used to work fine upto Ubuntu version 10.04, but it now breaks for 10.10 and/or Natty.

This tutorial will show you the shortest way to install PS CS5 on the latest builds of Ubuntu available.

Things you’re going to need:

• A Computer Running Ubuntu Maverick or Natty
• A Computer running windows (Or a VM, your choice)
• A Copy of the Adobe CS5 installer. This is publicly downloadable on the Adobe website (Shareware).

Let’s get started, shall we?

Howto Install LAMP in Debian Sqeeze

Written by pirat9 @http://www.unixmen.com/

Source: http://www.unixmen.com/linux-tutorials/1502-howto-install-lamp-in-debian-sqeeze

LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) is an open source Web development platform that uses Linux as operating system, Apache as the Web server, MySQL as the relational database management system and PHP as the object-oriented scripting language.
In this quick tutorial we will explain you how to install LAMP SERVER on Debian Squeeze (For newbies)

Tool To Backup/Restore Gmail Emails In Linux: “Backup Gmail” [IMAP]

Written by Andrew @http://www.webupd8.org/

A while back we wrote about backing up a Gmail account using Thunderbird. That doesn’t work for restoring but you could at least have access to all your old emails.

‘Backup Gmail’ can backup / restore Gmail emails using a GUI or via command line

But I’ve recently discovered a small application that allows you to both backup and restore your Gmail emails in Linux with just a few clicks. The application is called “Backup Gmail” and you can use it to backup Gmail either from the command line or using a graphical user interface. It uses IMAP, meaning that restoring your emails will also restore their labels!

Deleting old print jobs from command prompt

sudo rm -r /var/spool/cups/

Skype 2.2 beta for Linux – video is not working?

On April 6th, Skype released new beta for Linux – “Skype 2.2 beta for Linux with Skype Access and improved audio/video quality“
Video wasn’t improved for me. Quite opposite, it didn’t work at all. But solution was listed in section “Known issues” on Skype’s Garage blog:

Category: Video
Description: Your video capture might show seldomly green, scrambled or black image.
Workaround:
Please install one additional package which might solve your problem:
- Ubuntu 32 bit: install “”libv4l-0″” package and launch Skype with: LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype
- Ubuntu 64 bit: install “”lib32v4l-0″” package and launch Skype with: LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype
- Other distributions might have the same library, but may have a different path.

Change Skype launcher to

bash -c 'LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype'

and video will hopefully work.