Tag Archives: ubuntu

libkipi 0.1.6 and kipi-plugins 0.1.7 for Kubuntu Hardy

(thumbnail)I have been struggling to get geolocation (geotagging) working in digikam 0.9.3 on Kubuntu Hardy with KDE being at version 3.5.10. I found out, that it had something to do with kipi-plugins needing to be updated to at least version 0.1.6 and I could not find anyone who had these packages backported for Kubuntu Hardy. So I downloaded the source packages libkipi 0.1.6 from the Jaunty repositories. Building it required me to download an build libgpod 0.7, which worked fine. libkipi had some dependency issues, just make sure you also install ALL development packages for the KDE applications. I was strangely missing kdepim-dev that showed by breaking the build missing a file from libkmime. I then was missing a link to libGL.so which I fixed with the following command "sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 /usr/lib/libGL.so". After that the building worked flawlessly for both libkipi and kipi-plugins, which I had downloaded from Debian Sid unstable. See the screenshot for prove.

VDPAU and OpenGL support in MythTV 0.21-fixes

I have been rolling my own MythTV packages for a few months now, as the OpenGL paches made by Mark Kendall never got included in the official -fixes branch of mythtv. Now Jean-Yves Avenard has posted a VDPAU patch for MythTV 0.21-fixes on his site that in essence provides what PureVideo/DirectX Video Acceleration is on the Windows platform. He also provided a Ubuntu/Mythbuntu repository for all of us running that distribution. MythTV and mplayer with VDPAU support can be yours by using this repository. Add to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://www.avenard.org/files/ubuntu-repos testing/

Ohh, this is very much NON TESTED. Take it or leave it, but don’t complain on the official MythTV or Mythbuntu forums and mailing lists.

Originaly posted by Jean-Yves.

You will also need to create a profile to enable these features in your setup.

MythTV 0.21-fixes with ffmpeg backport for Ubuntu Hardy

The latest weekly packages provided by mythbuntu enable you to use coreav’s binary implementation of their x264 codecs. Theoretically this means that any HD file/show that is encoded x264 can be watched with less strain on your CPU. I tried it and did not encounter much difference between the native libraries and this 15$ proprietary one. But I stumbled upon a backport of the ffmpeg libraries from the development MythTV to the 0.21-fixes branch. I tried patching the source packages from mythbuntu with this new patch but got a build error due to the rather old x264 libraries provided with Ubuntu Hardy. But using this patch I was finally able to compile it. As soon as I collect some performance data and it turns out to be worth the time I will post a how-to.

Well, now I found out that this patch crashes while watching AVI files. No-Go for me. Then again I found this repository that has a synced ffmpeg version of the Ubuntu Hardy packages available.

opengl bug with nvidia 8600 GT and MythTV

  1. apt-get build-dep mythtv
  2. apt-get source mythtv
  3. apt-get install devscripts
  4. download the mythtv sources (mythtv_0.21.0+fixes17880-0ubuntu0+mythbuntu1.diff.gz, mythtv_0.21.0+fixes17880-0ubuntu0+mythbuntu1.dsc, mythtv_0.21.0+fixes17880-0ubuntu0+mythbuntu1_all.deb) from: http://uk.weeklybuilds.mythbuntu.org/mythbuntu/ubuntu/pool/main/m/mythtv/
  5. dpkg-source -x mythtv_0.21.0+fixes17880-0ubuntu0+mythbuntu1.dsc
  6. cd mythtv-0.21.0+fixes17880
  7. dch -i (put some comments in about what you changed. In the version
    number, use the old version number plus a +local1 or something similar.
    This will make sure that you’re version is marked newer, but that if an
    even "newer" version came out, you can still get it.)
  8. download all patches from http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/5324 or directly at Mark Kenalls homepage.
  9. Apply the patches in accending order (patch -p1 < fixes1_26.diff)
  10. remove the "–enable-glx-procaddrarb" editing everywhere it with "nano debian/rules"
  11. dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us -rfakeroot
  12. profit! or at least get some functioning OpenGL packages for your nvidia 8600 GT card

I had bought a new Nvidia 8600 GT card for my MythTV server/player. As this card is not supported to do chromakey for the OSD I wanted to get OpenGL to do the same trick. But I ran into the infamous black screen bug which Mark fixed with his patches. After a steep learning curve I have finally written a tutorial to build your own Mythbuntu packages to fix the error. Aditionaly I had to remove "–enable-glx-procaddrarb" from the configuration as it keeps the error on 64bit systems. And don’t forget to install the latest Nvidia drivers (177 or better).

Download Tedtalks via the RSS feed

I regularly watch the videos provided by Tedtalks. But this is only O.K. when you are using a browser. If you want to save the videos for later viewing you have to download them a second time. I stumbled upon a program called podracer. This little tool enables you to provide a list of RSS feeds that then read and all media that is provided in the feed gets downloaded. Ad a small cron job to the mix and you can use MythTV to watch all the latest Tedtalks.

RSS feed from Tedtalks: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TedtalksHD?format=xml

To install podracer on Ubuntu just type: sudo apt-get install podracer

Then edit the .podcaste/subscriptions file by adding the above RSS feed link.

run podracer or add a cronjob. Enjoy.