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Linux Multimedia Hacks
book

Linux Multimedia Hacks

by Kyle Rankin
November 2005
Beginner
330 pages
9h 44m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Linux Multimedia Hacks

Preface

If you ask most people to name the most powerful platform for multimedia, you probably won’t hear Linux as their answer. Dealing with images, audio, and video, with all their different formats and requirements, is never easy. Since Linux has a—in many ways undeserved—reputation for being complicated anyway, many people likely figure that multimedia programs under Linux add an extra level of complication.

The fact is that Linux has a number of very powerful and versatile tools, both graphical and command-line, for viewing and editing just about any multimedia content. I admit that I’ve been intimidated by some of these programs in the past, but as I’ve gotten more comfortable with the tools, and as they have become more user-friendly over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that Linux multimedia tools are not just on par with programs on other platforms in terms of both ease of use and power, in many cases the Linux tools are just plain better.

Compatibility with proprietary media formats has long been an issue under Linux. I remember the days when sites that posted videos in anything but MPEG-1 or -2 were horribly flamed by Linux users in Slashdot threads (not that it takes much to be flamed in a Slashdot thread). I admit I grumbled to myself sometimes as I waited for someone to post a link to a video in a format I could play under Linux. Of course, this was over five years ago. Today Linux enjoys compatibility with just about any media format you run into, even despite ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596100760Errata Page