There is such an easy way to take your MP3 files and burn them to your own custom music CD with Ubuntu, it is actually faster and easier than most programs on Windows.  The program I use is called K3B and it works perfectly.  To download it and use the program just follow these easy steps.

1. Open a Terminal Window
2. Type “sudo apt-get install k3b”
3. Click on your Applications -> Sound and Music
4. Click on K3B

The program now loads up, here is a screenshot:

Now just click on “New Audio CD Project”
Now you just browse to the files you want to put on your CD and Drag & Drop them into the bottom box like such:

When you have filled the CD with the songs you want click on the “Burn” button to the left near the bottom window (center area) and the program will automatically convert your MP3 files to WAVE files and create you an Audio CD that will play in almost all CD/DVD players.

Pretty simple huh?

-Dragon Blogger

As many of my blogger friends know I started this blog on August 23rd 2008, and today is Saturday September 27th 2008.  My blog has been in up and running 34 days so far and this is my 101st post.  This morning my blog finally jumped from a Google PageRank of 0 to PR2.  I am quite happy and excited to finally get a Google Pagerank # above 0, and am continuing to ensure my blog will stay on course to generate traffic and readers.

For everyone out there who stumbles across my blog I consider my blog successful for being only 34 days and I put hard work into making it more so.  I have several tips for new blogger’s and even bloggers looking to try something different.  Look at my “Blogging” category and read all of my posts on blog promotion, design, analytics and my methods for bringing my blog from 0 - an average of 176 viewers per day for the past week.

I have said this before and I will reprint it, the three most valuable social networking tools I find myself using every night are:

Entrecard - This is a must have for your blog, create a good appealing 125×125 ad, don’t use a generic one from Entrecard, it must say your blog’s name on it as well, don’t just have a picture without at least saying your blogs name on the logo.  Drop often and find people who have “Drop For Life” or “I will Drop You Back” on their sites, these people will return drops.  Join my Entrecard Generator, and use it.  It will open many quick links to Entrecard sites for easy drops.  (My generator is still being build, I add new links every few days)

SocialSpark - This is another must in my opinion, not only do you get the analytics, but you also get to browse other peoples blogs by category and link up with people in like genre’s.  Many people are helpful and I get alot of my viewership from SocialSpark people checking out my blog.

Zimbio - This is a really nice way to get your blog promoted, and to find nice articles and well written blogs.  I don’t get alot of traffic from Zimbio, but when you post your articles, you can easily get 90+ links on Google External Links from Zimbio.  I like the concept of Zimbio, the whole blogs turned into online magazine articles.  I am still trying to figure out how to leverage it to get more traffic flow, but I think Zimbio will be a more major player as more people start to use it.

Remember don’t get discouraged, it is easy to get euphoric when you see your blog have 200+ visits one day, and then get depressed when you see the next day it drops down to 20 visits.  You want to remember to have quality content posted, keep readers coming back with unique topics.   I also believe in some variety, there is benefit to specialized blogs, but if you make a technology blog and focus too specifically without somewhat reaching out to other topics once and a while, you will have such a restricted audience.

I advertise my blog over and over as 50% Internet & Technology (I consider posting about blogging, promoting analytics Technology), 25% Entertainment (My Heroes Reviews, TV Shows, Comics…etc), 15% Personal (Local reviews, social life…etc) and 10% Advertising (Paid Posts and Sponsorships).

This is a healthy mix in my opinion, as I try keep a little bit for everyone, but people who are interested in blogging, science, technology and politics will come back to read my latest on these topics.  Ironically, I have 101 posts, and my 5 most popular posts by far are:

1. Mozilla Songbird - Managing your iPOD with Ubuntu Hardy Heron
2. Dragon Bloggers Review of Heroes Season 3 Premiere - Part 1
3. Downloading YouTube Video’s to your iPOD Nano
4. Dragon Blogger Review of TNT Network’s Raising the Bar
5. Dragon Bloggers Review of Heroes Season 3 Premiere - Part 2

I have spent more than three days gathering and finding the best and most efficient way to download YouTube video’s and convert them from FLV to MP4 format so that they can be transferred to an iPOD.  I have finally found what I think is the easiest method, though it takes some work to setup initially, once you get the programs installed, it is a very simple process to download and convert videos going forward.

The software we are going to talk about and download includes:
CLIVE
FFMPEG
WINFF

These instructions were written and performed on Ubuntu Hardy Heron, if you are using Gutsy Gibbon or an older version, you may need to follow some of the links I have posted in the end for additional assistance.

For these instructions I downloaded a Tantric Video for Down and Out posted on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_EUvSN2gul

Screenshot from YouTube:

• Step 1 - Download and install CLIVE

CLIVE is a command line utility that will download video’s from YouTube and Google Video Web Sites.  It is very easy to use and simplistic in instruction.  It supposedly has the ability to convert videos using ffmpeg, but I was not able to get this feature working at all so I use the program only to download my online video’s.

To install CLIVE, it should exist in the ubuntu archives and easily retrievable with apt.

1. Open a Terminal Window
2. Type “sudo apt-get install clive”
3. Say yes for all dependant packages if there are any

Once you have clive installed, you can immediately start downloading online video’s, but lets wait to install the rest of the programs.

• Step 2 - Remove all traces of existing ffmpeg if you have any

The ffmpeg included in the Ubuntu Depot does not have the H.264 or AAC encodings and therefore cannot encode video.  We need to download the source code for ffmpeg and compile our own with the proper options.  This means we have to remove ffmpeg if we already have it installed.

1. Open a Terminal Window
2. sudo apt-get autoremove ffmpeg
3. Say yes to any prompts

• Step 3 - Download and Compile ffmpeg

1. Open a Terminal Window (make sure you are in a folder for downloads and such)
2. sudo apt-get install liblame-dev libfaad-dev libfaac-dev libxvidcore4-dev liba52-0.7.4 liba52-0.7.4-dev libdts-dev libx264-dev libx264-57 checkinstall
3. apt-get source ffmpeg
4. cd ffmpeg-*/
5. ./configure –enable-liba52 –disable-debug –enable-libfaad –enable-libfaac –enable-gpl –enable-x264 –enable-xvid –enable-pthreads –enable-libvorbis –enable-pp –enable-libtheora –enable-libogg –enable-libgsm –enable-swscaler –disable-debug –enable-shared –prefix=/usr
6. make
7. sudo make install

These above instructions should work and were compiled from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ffmpeg, I added some extra libraries, and compressed the instructions.  If you are using any version other than Hardy Heron 8.04, then you should refer to the Ubuntu ffmpeg Wiki for instructions on this step.

• Step 4 - Download and install WinFF

1. Download the winff Debian installer package right here by clicking on Google Code WinFF Debian Package
2. Save it to your downloads directory
3. Open up the file or double click on it should open the Package Manager
4. Click Install

Okay, now that you have complete the setup and installation of the 3 main programs needed, the rest is very easy.  You have downloaded, installed and configured CLIVE, FFMPEG and WINFF.  So now you can be ready to download YouTube or Google Video movies and Convert them from FLV to iPOD MP4.

• Downloading Movies with CLIVE

All you need to do is find your YouTube movies and copy the URL, as mentioned above the Tantric Down and Out video was used for this example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_EUvSN2gul

1. Open a Terminal Window
2. create a folder for your FLV files
3. mkdir flv
4. cd flv
5. clive <URL>

(the video will now download and drop in the folder you were in when you ran the command)

Screen Print of CLIVE downloading the Video:

• Converting FLV Movies to MP4 with WinFF

1. Open a Terminal Window
2. Type “winff”
3. This should open the WinFF program
4. Click on the “+ Add” button to add all of your files
5. Select “IPOD” in Convert TO drop down
6. Select “H.264 for IPOD” in the right drop down. (Alternatively you could just select MP4 and 16:9 WideScreen)
7. Select your output folder
8. Click the “Convert” button

Sit back and wait, it takes about 5-10 minutes per video depending on how fast your system is.

Screen print of WinFF

Now that you are done, I am working on building instructions on how to sync that MP4 video to your iPOD.  I have yet to find software that does this correctly, Mozilla Songbird doesn’t work.  So stay tuned for Part 2, when I figure this out.

-Dragon Blogger

One of the laptops in my house is running Ubuntu Hardy Heron.  For those who don’t know this is a Linux Operating System that is one of the most user friendly alternatives to Microsoft Windows.  The amount of support in the form of opensource applications and freeware is staggering.  You get even more support by a program called Wine, which runs windows emulation and many windows programs will work either flawlessly or with a few minor bugs under Wine. iPOD Nano management on an Ubuntu Hardy Heron machine is still a very tedious and annoying task, I wish Apple would just opensource iTunes, or at least make a debian binary so we can use it on Hardy Heron.  iTunes works under WINE, however there is no USB support, so you can use it as a player only pretty much, no way to sync to your iPOD.  The only real solution is to use one of the Ubuntu’s supported music players “Amarok” being a very popular one. You can find music player’s by typing the following at the command terminal: apt-cache search mp3 | grep -i player Personally I wish WinAmp had a Ubuntu Hardy Heron version that supported iPOD, but alas it doesn’t support it.  So we have to find a creative alternative to manage mp3’s and iPOD content. Open Source Program called Songbird is the best answer I have found so far, this program is very much an iTunes clone, it searches media and organizes it by ID3 meta tags, and it can sync playlists, albums and songs to your iPOD with drag and drop ease.  The one major problem is I can’t get video to work MP4 video can’t drag and drop to the iPOD, and SongBird is unable to delete and remove video content from the iPod itself.  It acts like it deletes the content, but then when you refresh or re-plug back in your iPOD it shows the same video’s are still there. If Songbird would support Video and Video Categories, as well as maybe leveraging ffmpeg to convert any video to iPOD format, this program would be a serious rival to iTunes on any platform.  I have heard that this is one of their planned features in a future release so I look forward to testing it. Currently I have not actually found a good method to port movies over to my iPOD Nano, but Songbird works perfectly for mp3 files. So for anyone who has jumped off of the Microsoft Ship and hasn’t gone to Apple, Ubuntu Hardy Heron is a very good choice.  It has many supported applications and features, and now Mozilla Songbird does a very nice job of managing most audio media and syncing to your iPOD Nano. PS:  Songbird will not be found with apt-cache search, or in the Debian repositories, you must go to Songbirds Web Site and download it. Get Songbird and start managing your mp3’s for your iPOD on Ubuntu. -Dragon Blogger

I was asked by a friend on how to get youtube and other downloaded video’s ported over to their iPOD Nano so they can be watched.  In addition, since mostly Music Video’s were downloaded my friend wanted to them to categorize to be placed in the “Music Video’s” category that comes standard with iPod Nano.  I found this to be a challenging task, but one that was very fun to figure out.

This process consists of 4 steps:
Step 1:  You have to download YouTube and other video’s off of the web.
Step 2:  Convert the video to MP4 iPOD movie format
Step 3:  Categorize the Video as “Television Show” or “Music Video”  (Optional)
Step 4:  Sync the video(s) to your iPOD

• Step 1:  Downloading the YouTube or Movie Video.

I have used numerous firefox plug-ins to download youtube video’s and two of the ones that work best for me are:
“Fast Video Download” and or “Magic’s Video Download”
Both install icons at the bottom task bar, and when you are your youtube video site, you just click on the icon and select to download the video.  In some cases, you need to repeat the click and download, since it won’t take the first time.  This is common with Fast Video Download, but it does work eventually.

TIP:  Once the YouTube video starts to play, pause it and then start the download so you don’t waste bandwith playing the video at the same time.

Once you save your .flv files to a common folder, the next step is to convert them to MP4 iPOD Movie Format

Here is Pic of Using Fast Video Download to save “Disturbed:  Inside The Fire” video from YouTube.

• Step 2:  Converting the .flv movie to MP4 iPOD Format

I have tried many programs and my absolute favorite is AONE Software’s “FLV to AVI MPEG WMV 3GP MP4 iPod Converter V4.2″, this piece of software is so incredibly powerful and easy to use.

1. Open program up
2. Add your Source Files
3. Select your output type “MP4 MPEG-4 Video Format”
4. Select your video quality
5. Select your output folder
6. Click Convert Button

See Image Below:

• Step 3:  Categorize the Video (This step can be skipped if you don’t care, and you don’t mind your Music Video’s or Video’s showing up as just “Movie” in the iPOD Nano.

iTunes is the only program that I know of that can categorize your movie as a “Television Show” or a “Music Video”.  I have tried every other method out there, including some sites that say edit the “Comment” and add [MV] for Music Video, even used Atomic Parsley, which can edit all ID3 tag metadata, but it cannot categorize and make the Video show up as an “iPOD Music Video”.

So Alas, iTunes is your only option if you really want to separate your movies into the default categories.  Note:  If you want to just create a video play list, you can do this in iTunes, or WinAmp.  I highly recommend WinAmp and use it for all of my mp3 -> iPOD Nano transfers, the only exception is I categorize the video with iTunes.  WinAmp will put the direct mp3 files directly on your iPOD without having to convert them to AAC format first which is very annoying.

1. Open up iTunes
2. Click File -> (Add Folder to library if you have more than one video in same folder) or (Add file to library)
3. Click on Movies (The movies should show up here)

Note:  You must do the following on each file individually, you cannot edit the Video Tags when you mass select files

1. Edit Each File one at a time
2. Right Click on File
3. Click Get Info
4. Click the “Video” tab
5. Select “Music Video” or “TV Show” in the “Video Kind” Drop Down

See Image Below:

• Step 4:  Sync the Video(s) to your iPOD

This is easy, now you just drag and drop, or sync as you would any normal song or music to your iPOD.
Note, at this point you don’t have to use iTUNES to sync, iTUNES did it’s job by Categorizing the Video, so you can use WinAmp to sync the video to your iPOD and it will still show up in the right category folder.

If anyone wants instructions on how to use WinAmp and your iPOD, let me know this also took some figuring out and research, but I love WinAmp and have used it for years.  The music library is so much easier to navigate in WinAmp in my opinion, than in iTunes.

Note for Ubuntu Users:

I have been trying for weeks to get the equivalent proces for Ubuntu but could find no firefox plug-ins for ubuntu to download video’s from YouTube, though there is the ffmpeg program which is freeware and does a great job of converting FLV movies to MP4 iPOD Video Format.  Unless you setup iTunes with WINE, there is no way to categorize the video’s into “TV Shows or Music Video’s” on Ubuntu.  SongBird is my favorite program for syncing mp3 files to iPOD on Ubuntu, but I haven’t tested whether or not it handles MP4 Video Format’s, I know it won’t delete some MP4 Video’s from the iPOD, even though I select them and delete, they aren’t removed from the iPOD.

Here are some helpful links again to all the software used:

Firefox Plug-in’s:

• Fast Video Download:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3590

• Magic’s Video Download:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6033

• AONE Software’s “FLV to AVI MPEG WMV 3GP MP4 IPOD Converter”

http://www.aone-soft.com/flv_to_avi_mpeg_wmv_3gp_mp4_ipod_converter.htm

• Itunes:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

• WinAmp:

http://www.winamp.com/player

• UPDATE

I have found a great free website and software that can combine Step 1 and Step 2.

Vixy.net is an online FLV to MP4 Converter that can take your youtube link and instantly convert the file to MP4 compatible format and allow you to download it to your desktop.  The best part about it is that it is absolutely free.  You can use the website, or download the free application to your desktop.

The only problem is it names the file some obscure random character code of names, and it doesn’t do batch files.    So I would still use the AONE’s Software for that, but for free you can’t beat the occasional instant conversion.

One of the Laptops in my household was converted to an Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) version release machine. The Toshiba Satellite model laptop did not have any drivers for Windows XP, and the laptop which sold for around $500 at Fry’s electronics does not have enough video or memory to make a good Windows Vista machine, so I thought it would be an excellent candidate for a Windows replacement box. After researching various choices, Ubuntu is the best by far. It is the most mature and easily converted to Operating System for non-Windows folks and has a superior array of software and features compared to other Linux flavors out there.

As with any UNIX operating system, many printer’s do not have driver’s for UNIX and UNIX machines typically only print to a Post Script enabled printer. I have a Canon MF3110 Multifunction printer. I don’t need my Ubuntu OS to do anything but printing, but there are no native drivers for it.

I have found numerous articles that help configure software for windows which allows you to share your printer and act as a port forwarder, where you setup a proxy printer through redmon and it translates Post Script to your regular printer. These instructions worked to the letter when performing them on Windows XP but were lacking when trying to setup a share with my Windows Vista Machine. These instructions say to use an Apple Laserwriter which doesn’t have drivers on Windows Vista, and also doesn’t include the extra registry entries needed for Vista to print properly.

http://home.comcast.net/~heretrythis/hp3100/psemuxp.html

But, with a combination of the above web site, and this web site. I was able to garner all the information to get my printer up and running.

http://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1268897,00.html

So here are full blown instructions, including links to the 3 program files you need.

You will need GSView, GSMon and RedMon.

Many of the links to download these programs found in the above two websites are dead and no longer work. I found the website called filewatcher, which has links to any file for download and this site is excellent.
Either go to these 3 links directly, and if they don’t work, go to http://www.filewatcher.com directly and search for these 3 binary files manually. Click on any and all hyperlinks until you find the ones that are valid and let you save the file. (Files to search for: gsv46w32.exe, redmon17.zip, gs814w32.exe)

http://www.filewatcher.com/m/gs814w32.exe.7337472.0.0.html

ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/ghostgum/redmon17.zip

http://www.filewatcher.com/m/gsv46w32.exe.1594368.0.0.html

• Install GhostScript and GSView right off the bat. I installed everything to C: drive for simplest instructions I didn’t want to have to configure any more than I already had to.

• Open a DOS window, and CD into the directory where GSview is installed. Make sure that the file “gsprint.exe” is located here. Type “notepad gsprint.cfg”, and create a file that looks like this:

-noquery

-color (optional - omit for B&W printers)

-printer
My Windows Printer

-ghostscript
“C:GSGS8.14BINGSWIN32C.EXE”

“My Windows Printer” is the name of your printer EXACTLY as it appears in Control Panel… Printers, and “C:GSGS8.14BINGSWIN32C.EXE” is the exact path and filename of the command-line executable for Ghostscript (your values for these two may be different - enter the correct values for your PC). Save this file, then run the following command:

• Install the RedMon application
• Create a New Printer, Select Local Port, Select Redirected Port, Set Port Name to RPT1: or anything similar. Note for Windows Vista, you must “Run As Administrator”->”Add Printer” you can’t select local port and a redirect port as a local admin.
• Select the HP LaserJet 1200 PS (This will also exist in Ubuntu and work fine, there is no Apple Laser Writer to select for Windows Vista)
• After creating the printer, edit the printer (again with “Run As Administrator”->”Properties”)
• Configure the RPT1: port with the following information.

Redirect to program: C:GSGSVIEWGSPRINT.EXE
Arguments for program: - (a single dash, no spaces)
Output: Program handles output
Run as user: [ ] (unchecked)

• Open REGEDIT32 (or just REGEDIT in Vista) and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersiondevices.

• In the right-hand pane, look for a REG_SZ value whose name is the printer you’re redirecting to (the same name you copied in Step 2),a value of something like winspool,Ne01:. Copy this information.

• Navigate to HKEY_USERS.DEFAULTSoftwareMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionDevices. Create a REG_SZ value with the same name and data. Note: This step is critical; without it, the redirector will not be able to see a printer to redirect output to. The key and its data should be recreated exactly.

• Close RegEdit.

• Share your printer and name the share something simple like “laserjet”

• Go ahead and test print with your new “HP LaserJet 1200 PS” printer, it should print out a test page fine.

• In Ubuntu, you must have SAMBA installed and smb:// mount the printer. For Windows Vista, unless you have guest account access, you must have a valid user account to connect as.

• You must have your firewall allow your Ubuntu or Unix Machine to connect to your Vista Machine.

These instructions should work for just about anyone running Vista or Windows XP (XP you can just do the instructions from this link and they work 100%, I already tested them 3 times)

http://home.comcast.net/~heretrythis/hp3100/psemuxp.html

If anyone has any problems or questions or needs assistance further, feel free to post a comment and leave me your email and I will respond to you.

Happy Printing

-Dragon Blogger