Chapter 4. Playing Music and Video

IN THIS CHAPTER

  • Legal issues with digital media

  • Using commercial content on Linux

  • Playing, recording, and ripping music

  • Setting up TV and audio cards

  • Recording and ripping music

  • Watching TV

  • Videoconferencing

  • Watching movies and videos

  • Storing and displaying images from digital cameras

One of the most popular and enjoyable activities on a computer is playing audio and video. With improved multimedia players and tools for storing and managing content, Linux has become a great platform for storing, playing, and managing your music and video files.

In this chapter, you learn to use the sound, video, digital imaging, and other multimedia tools available for Linux. You explore the process of configuring audio and select video devices and examine the kinds of media formats available for the Linux platform, how they work, and how to make the most of them by using the right applications.

Linux is an excellent platform for taking advantage of widely used formats such as MPEG, AVI, Ogg Vorbis, and QuickTime. A wide variety of players are available for the various formats, and this chapter discusses several of them to help you determine which might be the right one (or combination) for your interests and/or needs.

Note

Because many devices holding multimedia content are removable (CDs, DVDs, digital cameras, Webcams, and so on), recent features in Linux to automatically handle removable hardware and media have greatly improved the Linux desktop experience. See the section ...

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