Have you ever had the need to convert OGG files to AVI? Well I did. Since my company desktops are Windows based, they don’t have any plackback for the OGG format. So when I wanted to make an demonstration movie using Recordmydesktop, I had to encode to AVI.

And, like most thing in Ubuntu, it’s pretty easy. Just use mencoder, the mplayer movie encoder.

mencoder yourmovie.ogg -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -o youravimovie.avi

Where the -ovc defines the new video codec (lavc is the linux avi codec), -oac defines the new sound codec (or use -nosound)
Pretty easy this way!

Really a great *nix dvd converting tool: Handbrake

But the debian packages supplied @ handbrake site are only for ubuntu 8.10

Don’t worry if you want to use handbrake @ ubuntu 8.04; it’s possible and easy

Just download the GUI/CLI version (choose your preffered version) and then it’s easy

When you’re trying to start handbrake (ghb) you will get this error message.

ghb: error while loading shared libraries: libxcb-render-util.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

So install the desired libxcb package. Only problem here is that it’s not in the ubuntu 8.04 repository, so you either need to update your repository source (/etc/apt/sources.lst by default) or manually install the package. If you choose to update your repository, do NOT forget to remove them afterwards.

But as mentioned: the easy way is downloading the needed package

libxcb-render-util0_0.2+git36-1_i386.deb

here. Install and Handbrake works like a charm.

Well well..

Since I got a brand new N70 I need to set up my Nokia N70 with Ubuntu.. So I started Googling..

http://cholito.org/2007/12/17/nokia-n70-and-linux

http://www.smokinglinux.com/tutorials/nokia-pc-suite-for-linux-with-obextool-on-ubuntu-gutsy

And I decided to use Obextool for uploading / downloading my pictures, ring-tones games etc..

First install obexftp, obexfs en obextool

• sudo apt-get install obexfs obexftp obextool

Well great,the tooling is present. Since I am a GUI freak, I want obextool in my Gnome menu.

• sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/obextool.desktop

And fill it with the right information

• [Desktop Entry]
• Encoding=UTF-8
  Version=1.0
  Type=Application
  Exec=gksudo startobex
  Icon=/usr/share/icons/gnome/scalable/devices/phone.svg
  Terminal=false
  Name=Obextool
  GenericName=
  Comment=Browser your Mobile Phone
  Categories=Application;Utility;

As you will have noticed, I refer to an script called startobex. This is because gksudo can’t handle the ” ” as parameter delimiters used by obextool. I need gksudo to start the tool as root user. Below, the contents of startobex file (placed in /usr/bin)

• obextool –obexcmd “obexftp -u 1″

Well.. Almost there Now you should see your device file listing within the obextool.

When Obextool connects with an Nokia device, it still tries to get information about the memory. Sadly enough this only works with Siemens phones, so let’s turn it off!

• sudo gedit /etc/obextool.cfg

And edit the follow params

• set ObexConfig(config,memstatus) 0

• set ObexConfig(config,filemove) 0

The second option (filemove) is also an Siemens Phones only option, so lets turn that off too.

By default the slashes (/) are not used by Obextool. For my Nokia N70 to work, It does need to use the slashes. So let’s turn it on! (same config file as above mentioned)

• set ObexConfig(config,dir_slash) 1

And now.. It works as a charm.. I uploaded all my ring-tones, games etc.

Ofcourse you can also mount your Nokia Device. But, as far as I saw, only with superuser rights, so normal users cant access the mount (setting udev permissions right should fix this, but right now I don’t know how)