Archive for the 'ipod' Category

Split huge files in Ubuntu or any other Linux distro

Date: June 16, 2010. Categories: applications, ipod, linux and ubuntu. 4 Comments

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.

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Use iTunes in Linux including Apple Music Store

Date: December 15, 2008. Categories: applications, howtos, ipod, linux and ubuntu. 10 Comments

Quick Introduction to iTunes

itunes logoApple iTunes is one of the most popular proprietary digital media players in the whole world. Using this no doubts outstanding application you can organize, play music/video files in very comfortable and user friendly way (it’s not an advertisement but real truth). Moreover iTunes is the only way to access Apple’s onilne music store and thus people often seeks the possibility to seamlessly access it after moving to Linux from Mac or Windows.

Well, unfortunately Apple doesn’t believe in magic so there is no native support of iTunes in Linux. At the same time none would deny that Wine does and guys from this project do their best to make things with iTunes in Linux better. In our example we use iTunes 7.3 which comes with Quick Time player 7.1.6, Apple iPhone support and of course iPods of any version, family and generation.

Install Apple iTunes 7.3 in Linux

1. Download iTunes 7.3 from apple.com or filehippo.com

2. Prepare Wine for itunes installation (if not installed do “apt-get install wine -y” or “yum install wine -y” in Ubuntu/Debian or Fedora/Redhat/Centos respectively):

$winecfg
wine: creating configuration directory ‘/home/artemn/.wine’…
fixme:midi:OSS_MidiInit Synthesizer supports MIDI in. Not yet supported.
wine: ‘/home/artemn/.wine’ created successfully.

Select your audio driver, it may be something like OSS or Alsa so use one u actually use :) Set Hardware Acceleration to “Emulation” option. All other Wine settings are per your consideration e.g. Graphics tab.

3. Update richedit30 (Win32 Cabinet Self-Extractor):

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32
mv richedit32.dll richedit32.bak
mv richedit20.dll richedit20.bak
wine richedit30.exe

Set richedit20.dll and richedit32.dll as native through winecfg.

4. $wine iTunesSetup.exe
It will open iTune’s installation program under wine so you just install itunes as usually you did it in Windows. If error happens just re-run installer. See screenshot below:

5. Now you can start itunes and go through first run setup (all related screenshots are here). Just don’t care about errors thrown into the console:

$ cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/iTunes
$ wine itunes.exe

6. That’s it! Now u can use iTunes in Linux as you did it before in other operatin system:

P.S. By the way there are numerous Linux really native alternatives to itunes for comfortable music/video organizing and iPod management. At the same time latter can’t be as native and seamless as it’s in iTunes because those playes use Apple’s proprietary file storage system.

But I definitely recommend banshee, amarok and… exaile :)

Ubuntu Linux and your Apple iPod

Date: September 4, 2007. Categories: ipod, linux and ubuntu. 12 Comments

This article is from a new book published by No Starch Press: Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks: A Pain-Free, Project-Based, Get-Things-Done Guidebook by Rickford Grant.

Well, you will be happy to know that Ubuntu does iPods, even Nanos. You will also be happy to know that using your iPod on your Ubuntu system is quite easy. All you have to do is plug your iPod into one of your computer’s USB ports, after which Ubuntu will automatically mount it and place an iPod icon on your desktop. Yes, no longer do you have to mess around with mount and unmount commands or editing system tables. Just plug in your pod, and Ubuntu will do the rest. Read more…

iPod photo

You also might be interested in my iPod managers review post.

Top 7 iPod managing tools for Linux and Mac

Date: August 13, 2007. Categories: ipod and linux. 1 Comment

Here is a list of iPod managing tools for Linux and Apple Mac. You can find detailed review of these tools here.

Amarok
Banshee
Floola
gtkpod
Rhythmbox
Songbird
YamiPod

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 My name is Artem N. (artiomix AT gmail DOT com) and I'm Linux/Unix, Cisco systems engineer. The main idea of Linux Screw is to share relevant knowledge, skills and observations over The Web. Here you can find a lot of information related to different Linux distributions, FreeBSD, IOS as well as a other Open Source around staff. Read more ››