Phatch: photo batch processor

I already wrote about batch image processing some months ago. But then I demonstrated it on the example of the console utility ImageMagick. But now I found a great program - Phatch. Like ImageMagick it can use a very wide number of functions but does it with very simple user interface.



Download

Official site

Converting video for PDA

iRiverter is a good frontend for mencoder. It helps you easy optimize video for your mobile device.

sudo apt-get install iriverter mencoder

Select Jobs -> New -> Single Video and open a file.
Select the device: Device -> iRiver -> PMP Series (for example)
Select the resolution: Device -> Size -> 320x240
You can also change bitrate if you want.
Then press Convert.



After convert you can copy a new file to your memory card and use with mobile device.

Install multimedia codecs

There are very important question for newbees - how I can listen my music and watch my videos? As you know Ubuntu install only OGG and FLAC codecs from a box. These are exellent multimedia formats but many users use MP3 and AVI (DivX, Mpeg etc.). And maybe you want to watch your favourite DVD.

Well, that's easy. Go to Programs -> Add/Remove... and check in Sound&Video section these items:

• GStreamer ffmpeg video plugin
  
• GStreamer extra plugins
  
• GStreamer plugins for aac, xvid, mpeg2, faad
  
• GStreamer plugins for mms, wavpack, quicktime, musepack
  

Then go to Other section and check:

Ubuntu restricted extras
Macromedia Flash plugin

And then press Apply. Now additional codecs will be installed. After this you will be able listen your music and watch your videos. You also can use ffmpeg for convert video from one format to another, for example from flv to avi.

For watching licensed DVD you can use these commands (for Gutsy):
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Add a GPG-key:
wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

Now launch Synaptic, update repositories, search and install these packages:
libdvdcss2
w32codecs

OK, now you can watch DVD. I recommend for this VLC Media Player. On the screenshot you can see a start menu from DVD "Cars" in VLC Media Player.