Recently I’ve bought WD TV media player for streaming full HD movies (primarily in 1080p resolution) to my home TV from external storage like usb HDD or ipod classic. You might already know that size of average HD movie rip is more than 4GB (e.g. full HD Avatar movie image is literally 21 GB mkv file) so it’s just impossible to store such huge files on any FAT32 formatted HDD or ipod. My ipod classic 160 GB is windows formatted so it uses FAT32 filesystem where maximum file size is 4 GB. As far as ipod cannot be formatted into ext3 but still be able to play music (just sweet dreams) I have to split huge files to 3.99GB parts and store them to my ipod for later reassemble. When it’s time to watch the some HD movie stored at ipod it’s required to assemble those 3.99 GB parts into one solid file, transfer it to media player and then actually watch the movie.
Rather long preface but solution is quite simple. If u run Ubuntu you can try lxsplit utility for breaking files into parts (binary packages for other Linux distributions as well as source code are available at lxsplit project’s homepage.):
sudo apt-get install lxsplit
In order to split some file in 3.99GB parts use the following command:
lxsplit -s /path/to/hugemoviefile.mkv 3999M
Depending on size of hugemoviefile.mkv you will get several parts hugemoviefile.mkv.001, hugemoviefile.mkv.002 and so on stored in current directory. It means that if you’re going to store those parts on some external storage like ipod you can do the following:
cd /media/ipod/
lxsplit -s /path/to/hugemoviefile.mkv 3999M
and hugemoviefile.mkv.001.. will saved in /media/ipod/ directory regardless where hugemoviefile.mkv is located.
Now coming to assembling procedure. It’s just as easy as splitting:
lxsplit -j hugemoviefile.mkv.001
Once done you will get hugemoviefile.mkv saved in current directory.
Have an interesting article? You’re welcome to contact me and get it published at LinuxScrew.com!
Just came across smart ubuntu online radio client — radiotray. As it comes from its name radiotray sits in Ubuntu’s system tray and just plays online radio (see the screenshot taken on my Ubuntu Lucid Lynx). You can of course stop playing or select different channel (there are four channels coming by default). I found this utility useful when working as it doesn’t required to keep in RAM such monster like amarok just for listening the radio. Nice and simple application.
If you use Ubuntu (or other Linux distribution) and you wish to download some video from youtube.com into .flv file you can try using youtube-dl command line utility. It just downloads videos without any online applications, converters or etc. Type the following command in terminal to get it installed:
sudo apt-get install youtube-dl
Let’s imagine you would like to download the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2leg8mUE9rs (this is part of Military Parade at Red Square in Russia at 9th of May 2010). Just run youtube-dl download utility as follows:
youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2leg8mUE9rs
and in a few minutes you will get 2leg8mUE9rs.flv file that could be viewed using almost any video player like my favorite one VLC.
Some time ago I’ve written an article named 16 GB encrypted candy file describing how to create encrypted filesystem within regular file. After quick research it became clear that cryptoloop is vulnerable and there is open exploit available on the web: see it here (thanks to everybody who commented that article). So I don’t recommend to use cryptoloop but instead take a look at truecrypt that makes it possible not only to encrypt whole storage but also to create encrypted file just like I’ve described in 16 GB encrypted candy file article.
Continue reading…
This could be an outstanding news by its significance. The next version of Ubuntu (Lucid Lynx or Ubuntu 10.04) won’t include GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) by default due to its user interface that is too complex… What a #@^*?
Actually complex UI is not the only decision why GIMP should be vanished from Ubuntu so here is the full list:
- the general user doesn’t use it
- its user-interface is too complex
- it’s an application for professionals
- desktop users just want to edit photos and they can do that in F-Spot
- it’s a photoshop replacement and photoshop isn’t included by default in Windows…
- it takes up room on the disc
(taken from here)
Still sounds like fresh nonsense? What about F-Spot as a replacement? Well, an average user most probably claim that above mentioned reasons are true. Maybe that’s why GIMP already dropped from latest Fedora 12. But what should do people who use GIMP every day and loves Ubuntu???
Just execute ‘sudo aptitude install gimp‘ 
Recent Ideas