The Ignition Project: Category Linux

Spotify on Linux: Easy Edition

Keith Gable — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:50:00 -0500

Here’s a script I just wrote that installs Spotify on Linux with Wine. Works great with Wine 1.3.24 on Gentoo Linux x86_64 with PulseAudio (which works great and isn’t choppy or anything).

P.S. In the Spotify installer, don’t tell it to start when done.

#!/bin/sh

# Download spotify and winetricks
wget http://download.spotify.com/Spotify%20Installer.exe -O /tmp/spotify.exe
wget http://winetricks.org/winetricks -O /tmp/winetricks
chmod +x /tmp/winetricks

# Configure $WINEPREFIX
export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-spotify"
wineboot

# Set some various registry keys (Spotify recommends you use 44100/Emulation)
wine reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Wine\\Drivers /v Audio /t REG_SZ /d pulse /f
wine reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Wine\\DirectSound /v DefaultSampleRate /t REG_SZ /d 44100 /f
wine reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Wine\\DirectSound /v HardwareAcceleration /t REG_SZ /d Emulation /f

# Install some required packages (IE6 may provide WinInet, if so then it's safe to remove that)
/tmp/winetricks wininet ie6 corefonts tahoma winhttp wmp10 secur32

# Copy the WMP10 MP3 decoder on top of Wine's, tell Wine to use it instead.
cp -fv $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/windows/system32/l3codecp.acm $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/windows/system32/winemp3.acm
wine reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Wine\\DllOverrides /v winemp3.acm /t REG_SZ /d native,builtin /f

# Install Spotify.
wine /tmp/spotify.exe

# Remove temporary files
rm /tmp/spotify.exe
rm /tmp/winetricks

Howto: Use GNOME media keys with Amarok 2.0

Keith Gable — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:45:00 -0600

Actually, this will work for anyone, regardless of desktop environment. GNOME users are the most affected, because GNOME doesn’t send keys to Amarok for it to process.

Anyway, this is really simple. First you need to know what your media keys are. I have a Das Keyboard Professional so it lacks media keys; I use Meta and the numberpad to control my media stuff.

First, install xbindkeys. You probably already have it. Next, turn off Caps Lock, Numlock, and Scroll Lock, then use xbindkeys --key and press the key or key combination you want. You will likely get a name for the key like XFMediaPlayPause. Failing that, you’ll get a code. Either will work. Copy the code or better yet the name.

Edit ~/.xbindkeys. Make yours like this:

"amarok --play-pause"
  Mod4 + KP_Multiply

"amarok --next"
  Mod4 + KP_Add

"amarok --previous"
  Mod4 + KP_Subtract

First line isn’t indented and is the command to execute. Second is indented two spaces and the code you got previously.

Add xbindkeys to ~/.xinitrc (you may need to create it, chmod +x it, and put #!/bin/bash at the beginning of the file).

Hopefully that helps!

Fix: Dolphin hijacks the GNOME Places menu

Keith Gable — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:16:00 -0600

I had a problem where items in the GNOME Places menu were opening in Dolphin (and weren’t working). Somehow Dolphin hijacked the file:// protocol. The fix is simple though is something I just found by looking around in GConf Editor.

Why would I have Dolphin installed in GNOME you ask? Amarok 2.0 needs it. By the way it’s nice.

Do this as your normal user (not root):

gconftool-2 --set --type=string /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/file/command 'nautilus "%s"'
gconftool-2 --set --type=bool /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/file/enabled true
gconftool-2 --set --type=bool /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/file/need-terminal false

Hopefully other users find this through Google, because having the GNOME Panel’s Places menu launch Dolphin instead of Nautilus sucks, and this fixes it! :) (that’s a paragraph of keywords, folks)

(If you use a different file manager, replace the command as needed)

My Deinterlacing and Post-Processing Scripts

Keith Gable — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:05:00 -0600

At work, we put up a lot of Flash video. I use On2 Flix Pro for the Flash encoding part. But I get the content in a variety of formats. Perhaps the most common format we get is 480i MPEG-2 video interleaved. I’m encoding on a Mac, and QuickTime cannot correctly feed the audio stream into Flix Pro because it’s interleaved in the video stream. Also, Flix Pro’s deinterlacer sucks. So, I use mplayer and mencoder to fudge the video around and deinterlace it. It’s working very well. Oh yeah, you’ll need Perian.

Read it after the break.

Wait, how do you get mplayer and mencoder on a Mac? mplayer is included in MPlayer OSX. Show Package Contents, Resources, External_Binaries, mplayer, Show Package Contents, MacOS, and bam, your binary for mplayer is in there. mencoder, on the other hand, is hard to find. I ended up using ffmpegX’s mencoder, which is “MEncoder dev-CVS-060307-04:23-4.0.1”, compared to my mplayer which is “MPlayer dev-SVN-r25648-4.0.1” and way newer.

First, I have to strip the MP3 audio stream and the MPEG-2 video stream, into separate files. I have my video rips folder set up with a “scripts” subfolder and a “work” subfolder. Here is my script to dump both streams:

#!/bin/bash

# Takes $1 and dumps it into two files in work/
./scripts/mplayer "$1" -dumpvideo -dumpfile work/dump.m2v
./scripts/mplayer "$1" -dumpaudio -dumpfile work/dump.mp3

Next, I run cropdetect, which is a stupid script to save me typing:

#!/bin/bash

# Runs crop detect on the stream we dumped.
./scripts/mplayer work/dump.m2v -vf cropdetect -vo null -ao null

Next, I run a deinterlacing and cropping filter. And postprocessing maybe, but I’m not even sure if it works in mplayer like it works in mencoder. I’m sure the latest mencoder can let me combine this step with the next one. But as it stands I need to do this in two steps.

#!/bin/bash

# Takes work/dump.m2v and applies the crop in $1
# and deinterlaces, outputting to work/dump.deint.yuv

./scripts/mplayer work/dump.m2v -vf crop=$1,pp=de,yadif=0 \
    -vo yuv4mpeg:file=work/dump.deint.yuv

Finally, I put both streams together, doing final postprocessing. I also convert it to HuffYUV because QuickTime can play it with Perian. Again, I think the latest mencoder has the yadif deinterlacer, which would let me combine the previous script and current script in one step. BTW - A/V sync gets off if you leave out harddup.

#!/bin/bash

# Takes files in work and compiles them into work/output.avi
# $1 if specified is a list of additional filters to apply.

if [ "x$1" == "x" ]; then
    ./scripts/mencoder work/dump.deint.yuv -noskip -vf harddup,pp=de -ofps 30000/1001 -ovc lavc \
        -lavcopts vcodec=huffyuv:format=422p -audiofile work/dump.mp3 -oac copy -o work/output.avi
else
    ./scripts/mencoder work/dump.deint.yuv -noskip -vf harddup,pp=de,$1 -ofps 30000/1001 -ovc lavc \
        -lavcopts vcodec=huffyuv:format=422p -audiofile work/dump.mp3 -oac copy -o work/output.avi
fi

Also, if you noticed, the previous script lets me specify additional filters on the command line if I want. Usually I have to run hqdn3d, but not always.

Oh, and this will use about 1 GB per minute of content, times two because it’s creating an uncompressed file twice (the final AVI and the intermediate .deint.yuv). Don’t run yourself out of disk space! :)