Ubuntu 20.04: Multimedia Programs

This is part three of my Ubuntu 20.04 Install Notes. In this post, I walk through various media-related programs. These are the various programs that I use to work with images, video, sound, etc.

Drawing/Photo Editing

I had an issue once with Gimp being out of date. So, I’m installing their repository so that I stay up to date:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp 

Here’s all of the apps that I install:

  • Gimp: for editing photos
  • Inkscape: for vector-based drawings
  • Flameshot: for taking screenshots
  • Xournal: for annotating PDFs (it does much more, but that’s what I use it for)
sudo apt install gimp \
        gimp-data-extras \
        inkscape \
        flameshot \
        xournal

For Flameshot, I like it connected to the Print Screen button on the keyboard. So, I removed the existing print screen mapping using these terminal commands:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys screenshot '[]'
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys custom-keybindings "['/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/']"
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/ name 'flameshot'
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/ command '/usr/bin/flameshot gui'
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding:/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/ binding 'Print'

Then, I checked “Launch at startup” on the General tab of the configuration.

Finally, I went to the system Settings > Keyboard shortcuts. Flameshot was already there (command was “/usr/bin/flameshot gui” and the button was the “Print” button).

Audio Programs

The audio programs were pretty straight forward.

  • Audacity: the Gimp of the sound world, a multi-track editor for sound files
  • soundconverter: converting between different sound formats (don’t use this as much)
  • Musescore: for creating and printing sheet music
  • EasyTag: for editing the Metadata in sound files (used mostly for getting the song titles and such correct on the USB drive we use in the car sound system)
sudo apt install audacity \
          soundconverter \
          musescore3 \
          easytag

Video Programs

These are the basic programs I use for working with video:

  • mplayer: a nice command-line video player
  • vlc: a GUI video player with more features than you can list
  • youtube-dl: a command-line tool that can download videos from YouTube
sudo apt install mplayer \
      vlc \
      youtube-dl

I installed the as many codecs as I could so I wouldn’t have to worry about videos that didn’t work.

sudo apt install \
     libdvdnav4 \
     libdvd-pkg \
     gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad \
     gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly \
     ubuntu-restricted-extras 

Kdenlive has become my video editor/creator of choice. For kdenlive, I installed the appimage, which I downloaded from their downloads directory. I just copied the app image to my ~/bin directory.

OBS has become my tool of choice for recording video. I can use it for livestreaming and recording my own screen. I installed OBS from the repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:obsproject/obs-studio 
sudo apt install obs-studio 

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