VCDGear and WinFF on Ubuntu Gutsy

I once had this challenge on how to convert a .dat file on a VCD to mpeg. After scouring the web, I stumbled upon VCDGear which has a GUI version built for Windows and a Console version for Linux.

Unfortunately, its not at the repositories but its easy to install. Simply download the file from this page and then double click on the deb file and easy does it.

Execute it by typing vcdgear at the terminal and you'll see the options and command syntax to follow. For more info, visit http://vcdgear.com.

Another app I love is WinFF. I first saw it at PCLOS repos but its not included at the Ubuntu repos. Simply download the deb file from here and double click on it to install.

WinFF is a cross platform batch GUI for FFMPEG. It will convert most any video file that FFmpeg will convert. WinFF does multiple files in multiple formats at one time. You can for example convert mpeg's, flv's, and mov's, all into avi's all at once.

Great for converting flv's downloaded from Youtube to 3gp's to be uploaded to cellphones. :)

For more info, visit http://biggmatt.com/winff/.

Enjoy!

A Hit and a Miss in a Day

HIT: Mark, my officemate, can't synchronize his iPod shuffle on Windows PC. iTunes spew an error that it won't sync because there is a missing disc. Duh?!

So what I did is that I tried it on Ubuntu Gutsy... iPod Shuffle was automatically detected, Rhythmbox came up and I simply drag and drop the songs he wanted and it worked flawlessly!

MISS: I tried my Ubuntu Gutsy for a presentation... actually to play .dat movies on a VCD... plugged on an LCD Projector. Wow, the resolution is very good! Sound is working.. but hey it won't play the VCD that we wanted to play.... no applicable codecs, no suggestion to download... ubuntu-restricted-extras but still no go. :(

In short, I was embarrassed.

Now I am using Automatix2 to install the necessary codecs and see if it works. Dang!