Ubuntu 15.04 Media Programs

This is a continuation of my series of notes on my install of Ubuntu 15.04 on my laptop. The full list of posts is on this page. Previously, in the last post, I installed some virtualization tools. In this post, I’ll install the media tools that I use.

Visual

One of the most important programs that I use now is Shutter.  It allows me to easily take screenshots of what I am working and edit the screenshots.  The shutter package is easily installed from the Software Center.  Once installed, I tweaked a few of the settings in Edit > Preferences.

I checked the version, and it’s a little behind.  The website says they are at 0.93.1, while it installed 0.92.

Ubuntu 15.04 Shutter Version

The 0.93 version doesn’t add that much according to the website, so I am not going to worry about it.

First, I changed the path for the screenshots from the Pictures folder to a new folder that I created called screenshots.

Changing screenshot directory

In addition, I checked the first two options on the “Behavior” tab to allow it to start when I boot up the computer.

Ubuntu 15.04 Starting Shutter at startup

I installed the following other programs for working with visual media:

  • Gimp: for editing photos
  • Inkscape: vector-based drawing
  • Xournal: has features that allow marking up a PDF

Audio

Note: I installed the latest version of MuseScore from the repo:

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mscore-ubuntu/mscore-stable
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install musescore

Videos

These are the programs I use for playing and editing video:

Update: Scanning

I forgot to add one important piece. I have a network scanner that I like to use. It is an old HP PSC printer with a scanner attached. To enable that on my laptop, I needed to add the IP address of the server to /etc/sane.d/net.conf:

192.168.x.x

Codecs

This installed many different things for media.  For example, I noticed that it installed True Type fonts.  It also installs codecs for playing videos, etc.

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

In addition, I installed the libdvdcss to get the restricted formats.  That was simply by installing this package…

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

Then, I ran the script…

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Finally, I determined that I had to use the /dev/sr0 as the device for playing my DVDs.  Like this:

Opening a DVD in VLC

Resources

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