Docs/Desktop/Multimedia/Audio
From Mandriva Community Wiki
Contents |
[edit] Timidity
If KMidi is working, then you have Timidity installed. First you need to tell KMidi that there are more instruments, and then copy the patchset config files over to where KMIdi will find them, then check that the patch configs are pointing to the right place. The config files and instruments Timidity uses natively are installed in one place, and the instruments KMidi uses are in another.
The first config file to edit is /usr/share/apps/kmidi/config/timidity.cfg. (That's where it is on my system; I think that's a standard Mandriva Linux install place.)
This file tells KMidi which patchsets to make available in the little drop-down list that only says piano, guitar, piano+guitar - you're adding lines to this list, and then they'll need to be configured.
After the line
bank 0 standard
you need to have something like:
if 1 source piano if 2 source guitar if 3 source piano+guitar else source midia.cfg
midia.cfg is the config file supplied with Timidity for the standard patchset that is installed with timidity-instruments. To make sure it's there, check in /usr/share/timidity/.
If you have downloaded other patchsets for Timidity, then you can add them to the list - just make sure you have "else" before the last one.
After the list of patchsets is a list of drum patchsets - it works the same way.
When you start KMidi and select one of these patchsets, it's going to look in its own config directory for the patchset configs - so you need to copy them over from the Timidity config directory. You'll find the config files where your Timidity instruments are: on my system, in /usr/share/timidity. Copy the config file (say, midia.cfg) across to the same directory as where your timidity.cfg file for KMidi is sitting, and give it a try! You'll need to restart KMidi between each edit of timidity.cfg.
You might also find a heap of config files (I did) for instrument sets you don't yet have. If you have the space (some of them are LARGE) you can go hunting for them on Google.
Mandriva Linux 9.2 automatically includes the midia instruments package with kmidi. This means there is more than just the piano and the guitar patchsets. It's listenable but the best patchsets are still EAWpats. You can get them from Texstar.
[edit] KaZaA Lite 2.1 mini-HOWTO
This is a mini-howto on how to get Kazaa Lite 2.1 up and running under Linux with wine. It is most oriented to Mandriva Linux 9.1 , but the guide should work fine with any other distro. You can find it in: http://www.merlinux.org/merfaq/kazaalite2.1_english.html
Note: There may be copyright issues using Kazaa. Please investigate before use
[edit] Ripping with KDE
KDE (Mandriva's default desktop) comes with a very easy way of ripping CDs directly to the hard drive. Simply insert the cd and open up a file manager window, select services inthe sidebar and choose Audio CD Browser. Konqueror will display the tracks available as well as several folders. To rip all tracks drag the folder that corresponds to the format desired " Note: to rip to mp3 an encoder like lame is necessary ) to a location on your hard drive. A progress incidator will let you know how it's going and when it's finished you're done!
Note: If you have an active internet connection konqueror will automatically update tags and track names.
[edit] Ripping with Grip
Grip comes with a Help Browser that can be accessed directly from the Help tab or you can look over it online at http://www.nostatic.org/grip/. Grip's Help best describes how to setup, configure, play or Rip CD's and how to get more help so I won't duplicate it here. It's a pretty straight forward setup and will likely, with minimal tweaking, work "right out of the box".
Grip will initially rip a wav file of each track selected and, if you selected "rip+encode" then encode it to whatever type you chose. For mp3's I choose to use the lame encoder but the bladeenc is also recommended. If you chose to encode with lame, make sure the lame package is installed and because of licensing issues, you have to get it from a plf media source http://plf.zarb.org/packages.php.
I didn't have any problems with Grip until I installed Mandriva Linux 10.1 with a 2.6 kernel. In prior Mandriva Linux releases without the 2.6 kernel, you had to indicate ide-scsi on the lilo append line.
for example:
/dev/hdc=ide-scsi
/dev/hdc being the cdrom drive.
So with the 2.6 kernel, which hasn't a need for ide-scsi, I couldn't rip a music cd although Grip would *act* like it was, but wouldn't encode the tracks, so obviously something was amiss. According to the Grip documentation, in order to get the drive to actually use the cdrom/dvd drive correctly, I had to add the /dev/sgx ( x being the device number, and in my case, /dev/sg0 ) to the Grip config tab->Ripper->under "Generic SCSI device". After doing this, its started working correctly.
