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How to join together several Flash video (flv) files
YouTube users will be familiar with the 10-minute limit on videos uploaded to the site. People get around the restriction by splitting longer videos into several clips. Recently I wanted to watch a...
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How to play MSS2 codec (Windows Media Video 9 Screen) .wmv files in 64-bit Linux
One type of legacy .wmv file uses the ‘Windows Media Video 9 Screen’ MSS2 codec (“DMO-based codec, optimized for low-bitrate sequential screen captures or screencasts”, according to Wikipedia). Now, it...
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Playing QuickTime videos in Firefox and Chromium + XVideo bug in AMD Catalyst...
Video problems seem to be perennial in Linux. The latest two to affect me were: 1) Firefox and Chromium could no longer play QuickTime videos on the Apple iTunes Movie Trailers Web site; 2) a bug in...
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AMD Catalyst for Linux driver 12.2 fixes the XVideo bug that crashed X.Org...
Just a brief ‘heads up’ for users of the closed-source FGLRX driver in Linux: In a previous blog post I mentioned a bug in the AMD Catalyst driver for Linux that caused X.Org Server 1.11.x to crash if...
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Using Bombono DVD in Linux to create a DVD-Video disc from a MKV file
I had a .mkv file and associated .srt subtitles file, and wanted to create a DVD-Video disc so that I could play it in my stand-alone DVD player and watch the film on my TV set. I tried to create a...
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Installing and using ZBar in Linux to scan bar codes with your Webcam
ZBar is an application that can scan and decode several bar code symbologies (including QR Code) from sources such as a Webcam or an image file. I had been wanting to install it for some time and was...
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Let’s hear it for Konqueror
My browser of choice on the desktop has been Firefox for many years. Firefox uses the Gecko rendering engine. As a backup Web browser I use Konqueror but configured to use WebKit, rather than KHTML, as...
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ARTE Live Web videos
The Franco-German cultural Web site ARTE Live Web is an excellent resource for lovers of music (classical, jazz, alternative and World) and dance. The show videos at the site are enjoyable but...
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Fixing a problem with received video in Skype when using the AMD Catalyst...
Some users of Skype for Linux have reported that the bottom half of the received video image is corrupted in installations that use the closed-source video driver for ATI GPUs (the AMD Catalyst...
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Can Linux cope with 24 Hours of Happy?
I enjoyed Pharrell Williams’ feel-good songs in ‘Despicable Me‘ and its sequel, ‘Despicable Me 2‘. ‘Happy‘, a very catchy ditty he wrote for the sequel, also features in the World’s first 24-hour-long...
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Installing Firefox for Windows and the Silverlight plug-in in WINE
I use 64-bit (~amd64) multilib Gentoo Linux on my main laptop, and had been using successfully Version 0.2.3 of the Pipelight browser plug-in in 64-bit Firefox 29.0.1 for Linux to access an office...
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Installing and using the Pipelight browser plug-in with Firefox 30 for Linux
I use Gentoo Linux (~amd64) on my main laptop. Although I do not use Netflix or any of the other streaming video services that require the Microsoft Silverlight browser plug-in, I do need to use a...
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WebRTC – A viable alternative to Skype
Skype for Linux 4.3 and upwards requires the use of PulseAudio, which has caused discontent amongst those Linux users who do not use PulseAudio. Although I do use PulseAudio, I recently found out about...
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Fixing unperceived errors in my X Windows configuration
Prologue Last week I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade X Windows to the latest version available in the main Portage tree: 1.16.3-r1. I updated my entire installation (I ‘emerged world’, in Gentoo...
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Downloading YouTube video or only audio
One of my favourite Linux applications is the command-line utility youtube-dl, which I use quite often to download YouTube videos or extract only the audio, either for leisure or work purposes....
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Netflix – Not fit for purpose?
One of my family has a Netflix account. The account is accessible from any of the desktop and laptop computers in the house, whichever OS they are running. Recently we bought a so-called ‘smart TV’ (an...
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