Author: Vince

Speaker crackle with Ubuntu 9.10

Very annoying….. after upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 amd64 on my desktop my speakers started to crackle whenever sound needed to be played after a period of silence. It turns out with a high def soundcard the power saving feature introduced in 9.10 will cause the crackle to sound whenever the sound system is “woken up” (best way I can describe it).

To fix this edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

Comment out the last line, it should look like this:
#options snd-hda-intel power_save=10 power_save_controller=N in the file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

sopcast in ubuntu 9.10 amd64

i have an 32 bit version of sopcast. in order for it to function properly in ubuntu 9.10 amd64 it requires a 32bit version of libstdc++5, not a 64bit version. Therefore the amd54 deb of libstdc++ is useless. get the x86 version instead.

wget http://frozenfox.freehostia.com/cappy/getlibs-all.deb
wget http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/gcc-3.3/libstdc++5_3.3.6-17ubuntu1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb
getlibs -i libstdc++5_3.3.6-17ubuntu1_i386.deb

View DVDs with Ubuntu

Ubuntu can’t watch DVDs out of the box. To do so you need to install lidbdvdcss from medibuntu. Do the following:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
sudo apt-get -q update
sudo apt-get --yes -q --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring
sudo apt-get -q update
sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

side note, if you wish to install support for wmv and realmedia do the following
i386:
sudo apt-get install w32codecs

amd64:
sudo apt-get install w64codecs

Convert MKV to MP4 for your PS3

My handbrake settings for converting mkv to mp4 which works on the ps3.

Video Tab:
Video Codec: H.264 (x264)
Framerate: same as source
2 Pass: unchecked
Quality -selected- Target Size (MB): 2300 (this was for a mkv that was about 2200 megs)

H.264 Tab
Reference Frames – Number: 3
B-Frames – Number: 3
Pyramidal B-Frames: checked
Weighted B-Frames: checked
Motion Estimation – Method: Uneven Multi-Hexagon
Motion Estimation – Range: 16
Motion Estimation – Subpixel Method: 6
Motion Estimation – Analysis: Some
8x8dct: checked
Miscellaneous – Deblocking: -2 -1
Trellis: Final Macro Block
No Fast P-Skip: unchecked
No DCT Decimate: unchecked
CABAC Entropy Encoding: checked

Speed Up Gnome for Old Computers

Turn off the following in System->Preferences->Startup Applications:
Bluetooth Manager (unless your old computer has bluetooth… which i doubt)
Evolution Alarm Notifier
Remote Desktop
Visual Assistance (unless you need it)

open gconf from the terminal:
gconf-editor
/apps/metacity/general and check on reduced_resources
/apps/panel/global and uncheck enable_animations
/desktop/gnome/interface and check off the box for accessibility

Select Themes that are lighter and more responsive. You can go with something like:
Controls:Simple, Window Border:Simple, Icons:Gnome, Pointer:Default Pointer
Controls:Raleigh, Window Border:Bright

Visual Effects: None

Installing Mythtv on Ubuntu with a Pinnacle PCTV

I have installed mythtv before, but I could never really get it to work properly with my Pinnacle PCTV TV card. I couldn’t record the sound from the tv shows because I had an old card. I finally found a post by someone named tcj that pointed me in the right direction. Basically since this is an old card I would need to use a jumper cable to catpure the sound from line in.

From: http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/2003-July/008852.html
“Pinnacle PCTV Pro. Video capture works using the bttv kernel driver. Audio
requires using a jumper to a sound card; btaudio does NOT work.” Note that btaudio is nolonger used as it was for OSS and OSS is now considered obsolete. ALSA is what you will need with snd_bt87x. Ubuntu 9.04 will automatically load the required modules: bttv and snd_bt87x.

Details on setting up the jumper settings for sounds here: http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-7.html.

You will first need to properly setup alsa. Do so with the following commands:
$ amixer set Master,0 100%,100% unmute
$ amixer set PCM,0 100%,100% unmute
$ amixer set Line,0 75%,75% mute captur
$ amixer set Capture,0 100%,100% captur
$ su
# alsactl store
# exit
$

Next, on the backend mythtv server set the audio capture device to /dev/dsp.

Change the output sound device in mythfrontend->setup->Audio from /dev/dsp to ALSA:default.

If it is still not working try this command to manually unmute your tv capture card:
v4lctl -c /dev/video0 setattr mute off

VDR Ubuntu 9.10

http://smart-home-blog.com/archives/1658
and upcoming 9.10 Karmic:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gda-dachsweb/vdr/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/gda-dachsweb/vdr/ubuntu karmic main

After that VDR and its headers and plugins can be easily installed using apt-get.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1294484
http://blog.mymediasystem.net/avchd/hdtv-with-karmic-koala/
http://forum.sifteam.eu/media-center-vdr/57992-vdr-hdtv-ubuntu-9-10-a.html
http://blog.mymediasystem.net/avchd/hdtv-with-karmic-koala/