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This article is all about manipulating films and songs to be held as data files. It covers ripping, conversion, metatagging and similar topics.

see also:

Ripping

Ripping is converting media into computer files for portability and flexibility

CD ripping

Options

  • Asunder is simple, does MP3s and is in repos - gets some +1s
    • uses CDparanoia under covers (like apparently a lot of rippers)
    • does not search or save cover art images
    • GTK-based
  • Sound Juicer is Ubuntu default but has had issues in past
  • abcde CLI that gets lots of +1s
  • RubyRipper well +1ed but not in repos

asunder

NB: Asunder does not search or save cover art images

sudo apt-get install -y asunder

# Now installs into options when inserting CD  via MimeType=x-content/audio-cdda
# sudo leafpad /usr/share/applications/asunder.desktop

# If you want to be able to output to MP3 as well as OGG
sudo apt-get install -y lame
# does this include the dependency libmp3lame0 ?

# changes to config stored in ~/.config/asunder
# this example is for very small file sizes (at the cost of quality)
  • Destination Folder: choose Media.IN/Music.IN/RIP.IN
  • Create Playlist: No
  • Eject when finished: Yes
  • Album Directory (folder name): %A/%L
  • Music Filenames: %N %T
  • OGG Quality: 1 (or 6 for Oversize)

DVD ripping

# MakeMKV wraps to single file (nicely for XBMC) but no compression
## see MKV Extractor Qt as GUI
# Handbrake supports MKV too but excellent balance of quality and compression in h264
# these also work with Blu Ray
# AcidRip and dvd::rip are in multiverse 
# help - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/RippingDVDs
sudo apt-get install dvdrip

Other audio recording

You might want to 'rip' old vinyl records or cassettes to your computer, or simply records other sounds captured via a microphone.

You can see more sample commands at http://mocha.freeshell.org/audio.html

For post-recording manipulation see later sections.

identifying input devices

arecord below includes the options:

  • -l list input devices ('PCM's)
  • -D NAME select device by NAME if there are multiple

An example of NAME for 'card 1' might be sysdefault:CARD=1

You can also list sound cards using cat /proc/asound/cards and configure them interactively using alsamixer. For troubleshooting hardware or system settings relating to audio capture see https://github.com/artmg/lubuild/blob/master/help/diagnose/audio-video.md

arecord

Just as ALSA's aplay will playback a wav file, arecord will record one. If you want to compress it you can always pipe the raw audio into your prefered sound convertor

arecord -vv -f cd output.wav
# strip the wav container to pipe audio to encoder
arecord -v -f cd -t raw | lame -r -b 192 - output.mp3
# specific format settings instead of 'cd'
arecord -f S16_LE -c 2 -r 32000 -d 2820 C90a.wav
# Rip Cassettes S16_LE (16 bit little endian) -c 2 (stereo) -r 32000 (32 kHz) 
# Clear speech  S16_LE (16 bit little endian) -c 1 (mono) -r 22050 (22.050 kHz)

NB: if you record 47 minutes at these 'cassette' settings uncompressed then your C90a.wav file would be around 345 MiB in size - credit https://www.colincrawley.com/audio-file-size-calculator/

ffmpeg

If you don't need to do any editing, splicing or post-processing or simply don't have the space on your device, then you might want to record straight to a compressed file. ffmeg can take its input directly from

ffmpeg -f alsa -ac 2 -ar 44100 -ab 160k -i pulse -acodec libmp3lame OUTPUT.mp3

SoX rec

The SOund eXchange sox package's rec utility has a more friendly set of options, and comes with the sox conversion programme too. It might use the same libraries under the covers, but it could be simpler.

Burning optical media

Operating systems like Windows 10 and macOS now come with built-in features for writing ('burning') to optical media like CDR, CDRW, DVD+-RW. These tend to be either via music managers (iTunes/Music or Windows Media Player) for burning .WAV files into audio discs, or through file managers (Explorer or Finder) for simple data files. Some video editors may have ways to output to DVD formats.

What about Ubuntu and derivatives?

Normalise peak amplitude

In case you audio file is too quiet (or too loud) you can make it a 'suitable' volume

  • manually with ffmpeg

  • Audacity with ffmpeg

    • graphical alternative
    • adding the extra libraries allows you to open many more file formats

  • open Audacity application

  • Menu / File / Open

    • Browse to Downloads where the audio or video file was saved

  • Menu / Select / Select All

  • Menu / Effect / Normalize

    • Leave it set to peak amplitude -1.0 dB and click OK

  • Audacity window / Bottom left corner / Project Rate (Hz)

    • This should be 44100
    • If it is anything else, drop down the list and choose 44100

  • Menu / File / Export / Export as WAV

    • this should say File type: WAV (Microsoft)
    • and Encoding: Signed 16-bit PCM
    • in Save As enter the filename (e.g. audio1 )
    • click Save
    • in the Edit Metadata Tags dialog simply click OK
    • after a few seconds the export should be complete

  • Menu / File / Close

    • Save Project before closing: No

  • Menu / File / Quit

Music file conversion

Re-encoding into smaller files

Objective:

  • re-encode music files (yeah, I know lossy to lossy is sub-optimal)
  • to compress (reduce file size) an allow for more music
    • on players with limited storage media space
    • whilst maintaining ID3 and other metadata

Choosing a target codec

This section contains opinions: YMMV

In an ideal world, we would have enough storage for FLAC files, and ears that can tell the difference. In a pragmatic or realistic world, however, the target compression algorithm would likely be:

  • OGG Vorbis
    • open standard
    • great performance
    • not supported everywhere

but that last one can be an issue in making music ubiquitous, so between

  • MP3

    • the most widely supported format
    • not the best sound per Mbs

  • AAC

    • a superior algorithm for making smaller music files sound better
    • very widely supported but perhaps not universal

AAC might work out to be the better choice (until you find a vital player that does not support it).

Candidates

  • Sound Converter (GNU)

    • should retain metadata
    • soundconverter should be in repos

  • soundkonverter (QT)

    • was in repos
      • has since been dropped
    • required additional KDE libs (c 400MB)

  • ffmpeg

  • Handbrake

    • widely used
    • includes video conversion
    • GTK3 widgets
    • requires quite a few libraries

  • fre:ac (formally BonkEnc)

  • QWinFF

    • no obvious updates since 2015
    • PPA owner has made quarterly updates into github more recently
    • no recent ubuntu versions supported

  • Audacity ("chain" feature)

  • gnac ?

  • does qmmp batch convert ?

see also local "MultiOS Data Music Metadata.txt"

re-encoding tests

  • as per cd ripping below, currently using asunder to rip
    • default to OGG as not worked out LAME config yet to produce MP3s
      • need to check Windows and Android compatibility for OGG, may not be natively supported
      • defaulting to quality 1 for compact or 6 for oversize
    • uses CDParanioa for album art and track metadata
soundconverter

  • sudo apt-get install soundconverter gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly

  • help - http://askubuntu.com/questions/468875/plugins-ugly-and-bad

  • Preferences

    • Into folder Media.IN/Music.IN/_compressed
    • Create subfolders : Artist / Album
    • Delete original: do NOT check
    • Replace Messy: CHECK
    • Format: OGG
    • Quality: Very Low (64kbps)
      • Low (96kbps) resulted in 3-4MB files

  • later try handbrake ?

example ffmpeg

to convert a folder full of files

...

cutting an audio track

if you want to extract a short clip of audio from a track, for instance to create a ringtone or alert, you can use the exact same syntax of ffmpeg as for Video Cutting, below, because it does NOT re-encode.

ffmpeg -ss <duration> -i input_file.mp3 -t <duration> -codec copy output_file.mp3
# where <duration> is hh:mm:ss (e.g. 01:10:30)
# of the start and length of the segment you want to extract

AV File Conversion

Move the relevant detail from [### Music file conversion]

This is about the decoding and re-encoding utilities themselves, more than the front-ends that make them easy to use

  • Demux / mux - handle the container format
  • Decode / encode - handle the compression and storage of each image

GStreamer is the back-end that handles interaction between many codecs and the application software Some older app versions relied on the Gstreamer legacy libraries (e.g. gstreamer0.10-xxxx) but fortunately most have moved onto mainstream versions now

ffmpeg vs Libav/avconv

At their basis these are 'religious differences'

  • Libav forked from ffmepg in 2011, and was widely used at the time by OSes whose maintainers followed the fork
  • a cursory glance at the situation in 2016 suggests that ffmepg is more actively contributed to
  • or is it that ffmpeg gets more commits but libav do more testing?
  • ffmeg might be in popular use again
  • NB: Libav project does NOT equal the libavcodec package - don't get confused (check for l vs L)

? if you have one or the other, how do you tell which package your ffmpeg command utility comes from

ffmeg

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

see example syntax for Basic video cutting below

others

  • mencoder - nicely matched to mplayer

  • xvidenc ?

  • h264enc ?

  • what's below the covers of Handbrake and MakeMKV?

Films

Blu Rays and DVDs

For some reason the whole subject of Blu Rays and Linux seems overly complex. You can get an intro at [http://www.libregeek.org/2014/01/05/a-guide-to-playing-blu-rays-on-ubuntu-linux/] but once you realise that's the simplified version of the story you might still be worried!

start with MakeMKV

I found a PPA method of installing MakeMKV, but it's not widely mentioned so I'm not sure how trustworthy it is - http://askubuntu.com/a/579156

# help - http://www.makemkv.com/developers/usage.txt
# list all available drives
makemkvcon -r --cache=1 info disc:9999

# alternative way to find device code and see disc title
blkid


# example device path
makemkvcon info dev:/dev/sr0

# back up the disc with decryption to specified folder/path
makemkvcon backup --decrypt --cache=16 --noscan -r --progress=-same disc:0 folder/path/DiscTitleName

##### Streaming your discs #####
# help - http://www.makemkv.com/developers/usage.txt
makemkvcon stream --upnp=1 --cache=128 --bindport=51000 file:/home/family/Videos/backup/CATCHING_FIRE/

# options NMT (using Syabas myiBox protocol extensions) and UPnP (fewer video formats supported in NMT UPnP client)
# see also - http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=703

###### view the streams ######

HOST=localhost
# view first title
x-www-browser http://$HOST:51000/stream/title0.ts
# examine all titles and available formats
x-www-browser http://$HOST:51000/

see also uPNP discovery and clients - where?

MakeMKV for direct playback

see:

MakeMKV and Handbrake

online video caching

If you need to download a video from an online service, such as YouTube or Vimeo, in order to cache it temporarily, to ensure it is available offline, you could use VLC – it will show you the temporary viewing url from the online player.

  • Open VLC media player
  • Menu / File / Open Network
  • paste in the URL to the player page for the video you want
  • pause the playback once you are sure it is the correct media
  • Menu / Window / Media Information / Location
  • open the Link with a browser or paste it into a browser, then you can use the Save As from the browser to cache

Note that doing this may, in some cases, contravene the terms of use of the service.

Video editing

basic video cutting

If all you need is to splice out the video from a given point to another, you can use ffmpeg's copy mode* -c(odec) copy which omits decoding and encoding so your content is transcribed verbatim.

Examples:

# Video Cutter - extract timed sequence from VOB files
ffmpeg -ss 00:04:30 -i VTS_01_1.VOB -t 00:07:00 -codec copy My_Movie_Cut.MPG

Notes:

  • VOB is Video Object container format for DVD
  • it contains MPEG program stream video, audio & subtitles (limited variety of compression standards)
  • This will simply demux the video and audio stream,
  • and Cut them from the start to end frame/time,
    • -ss -i -t
  • and in this case re-mux into an MPG container

Video editing suites

Non-linear editing (NLE) is offline planning of how your video and audio sequences will be placed, cut and transitioned, and then you perform a final render to create the linear AV output.

These are alternatives to stock editors like Apple iMovie or Windows Video Editor, and are cross-platform open-source projects:

  • OpenShot
    • simple and similar to stock editors
    • reasonably straightforward to learn the ropes
    • might be limiting for more complex video projects
    • Qt with C++ video editing library libopenshot, JUCE library for audio, some python
    • single principle developer, still active after 12 years
    • brew openshot-video-editor requires elevation for sh!
  • Shotcut
    • similar, uses Media Lovin' Toolkit (MLT framework)
    • interface may be more modern than OpenShot
    • but it might take more learning
  • Kdenlive
    • aslo uses MLT
    • very mature project, but some have find implementations buggy
  • Avidemux
    • very simple - almost like a GUI for ffmpeg copy
    • does have script editor for automation
    • option to easily save the audio track to file
  • Olive video editor
    • relatively new project aiming towards professional high-end users
    • could be one to watch, if the complexity is not too high
  • OBS (Open Broadcast Studio)
    • more for editing captured video streams (e.g. webcam)
    • however it can import existing footage

Handling media files

Identifying contents

If you have a media file, there are a couple of utilities that can reveal useful details about the contents:

  • exiftool
    • Metadata - information about what device made the file, when, under what conditions, and into what format
  • mediainfo
    • specific details about what contents are in the media file, formats and encodings, and whether it is encrypted

NB: If the media file is encrypted, and you don't have the DRM decryption keys, you will not be able to see the contents. For example, if you record onto USB storage from a PVR, most devices make it so you must watch the recordings on that same device.

exiftool

Using exiftool - see:

Media indexing

This is about maintaining a catalogue of your media, for instance DVDs containing films, to help select and locate the one you want to watch.

  • How to index DVDs
  • make them easy to find
  • View their Artwork online
  • Scan UPC codes from covers?

see also how to bulk rename based on metadata in [https://github.com/artmg/lubuild/blob/master/help/manipulate/miscellaneous-files.md]

Applications

Try MyMovies for Android scanner

Other candidates

Data Sources

Some include cover art

Incl DVD
  • AllCDCovers - src About
  • Albumart - src About - Amazon backend
  • CDCovers.cc - last updates 2009/10 ??
  • IMDB
  • AllMovie
Mainly CD
  • Discogs - src About
  • MusicBrainz - src About
to check
  • freedb.org
  • theMovieDB
  • Collectorz
  • DVD Empire
  • LastFM
  • rate your music
commercial or restricted

CDDB Gracenote AlbumArtExchange

Music Metadata tagging

see also:

  • [MultiOS Data Music Metadata.md] for metadata editors
    • and old notes on Windows apps for compressing oversized music files

Meta data organisers

The most popular... do not support WMA!

  • kid3-qt - simple and relatively light - see below
  • puddletag - see below
  • easytag - good range of features, in repos

Other candidates:

  • mp3tag on Windows! ... under Wine?
  • Picard for MusicBrainz (does MWA?) metadata http://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_Picard/
  • TagScanner under Wine (can put cover art into folder not files)
  • kid3 (WMA support?) under wine or using KDE4
  • entagged (java but supports WMA)
  • coquillo - QT-based
    • not sure if there is a debian / ubuntu repo
  • Amarok, although more a player and format convertor, has been reported to update WMA tags successfully
Exiftool

Although not a specific candidate for the functionality mentioned here, exiftool is a great CLI utility for basic file metadata manipulation. See previous section above for information

kid3-qt
sudo apt-get install kid3-qt
puddletag

QT-based

Feature limitations:

  • Since 0.10.2 WMA support has been dropped (to avoid risk of corruption)
  • 1.02 ('current' in 15.04 repos) does not show Album Art
  • 1.05 source on github released May 2015

Review: www.ubuntugeek.com/linux-finally-gets-a-great-audio-tagger.html See: https://fanart.tv/2012/06/organizing-your-xbmc-music-library/

  • Edit / Preferences
    • Tag Panel / Add
      • A&lbum Artist
      • albumartist
      • 0
    • Tag Panel / Add
      • Disc &Number
      • discnumber
      • 2
  • Columns
    • (add the same two as above)
Picard
# credit https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Picard_Linux_Install
# available in repos

sudo apt-get install picard

# help http://picard.musicbrainz.org/docs/basics/