Milian Wolff

So just yesterday I’ve published a bash script which rips the audio stream of Flash Videos (*.flv) to mp3 format. It’s nice, fast and imo all-purpose. But I didn’t like the audio quality. Thus below you can find a second version of the script which is using mplayer and lame instead of ffmpeg. Usage and behaviour should be pretty much the same. Only the audio quality should be better on cost of a bit more computing.

Since it relies on the fact that the input *.flv video already uses MP3 encoding for its audio stream this might not work for every flash file! Youtube works just fine though. You can find the script after the break, it’s also attached below. For usage / installation / more information read the old article.

If you wonder why I reencode the audiodump with lame: The dumped mp3 file is considered by most (all?) audio players to be ~10x the length. A five minute video gets a 45 minute audio dumpfile. It plays fine but seeking is a mess. Reencoding fixes this. If you know an alternative which does not require reencoding or is generally faster - please drop a comment!

Kirocker is such a great application, it’s a pity the developer Sébastien Laoût has given up on it and is using Windows now!

Usually I only use the kicker applet, the full screen window is nice for parties though. But I didn’t like the way the applet handles scroll events: It seeks (if possible). Since I rarely seek when listening to music I’d rather have the behaviour of the Amarok tray icon: volume control!

I had a look inside the sources and found this part in src/coverdisplay.cpp:

void CoverDisplay::wheelEvent(QWheelEvent *event)
{
    if (areControlsShown()) {
      if (event->orientation() == Qt::Vertical) {
         PlayerInformation *infos = PlayerInformation::instance();
          if (infos->canSeek()) {
             int deltaSeconds = 10 * (event->delta() > 0 ? 1 : -1);
               m_infos->seekRelative(deltaSeconds);
            }
      } else {
           if (event->delta() > 0)
              AmarokApi::volumeUp();
         else
               AmarokApi::volumeDown();
       }
  }
}

As you can see it already supports volume control via scrolling! The thing is I’ve disable four-way scrolling for my MX1000. Thus I’ve simply swapped the if statements and now I’m really happy with Kirocker. Here’s the updated snippet:

void CoverDisplay::wheelEvent(QWheelEvent *event)
{
    if (areControlsShown()) {
        if (event->orientation() == Qt::Vertical) {
            if (event->delta() > 0)
                AmarokApi::volumeUp();
            else
                AmarokApi::volumeDown();
        } else {
            PlayerInformation *infos = PlayerInformation::instance();
            if (infos->canSeek()) {
                int deltaSeconds = 10 * (event->delta() > 0 ? 1 : -1);
                m_infos->seekRelative(deltaSeconds);
            }
        }
    }
}

Replace the old code, compile Kirocker, install it. Then restart kicker (killall kicker; sleep 1; kicker;) and Kirocker should accept scroll events in the way the Amarok tray icon does!

UPDATE: Also check out mp3dump part 2

On some undefined occasion you might want to dump the audio stream of a flash file. This is how you do it:

1. Get the *.flv, e.g. visit youtube with Konqueror and check /tmp for a file like FlashV5SQLt - this is your FLV.
2. Install some dependencies: ffmpeg is required, mp3info and ecasound are optional but strongly recommended.
3. Download the script below (it’s attached!) and save it inside your $PATH, remember how you’ve called it!

4. I’ve saved the script inside ~/.bin which is inside my $PATH so all I have to do now is running it:

   mp3dump FlashV5SQLt "Foo Bar" "All Your Base Are Belong To Us"

   This would rip the audio stream of FlashV5SQLt to a file named Foo Bar - All Your Base Are Belong To Us.mp3 - with emulated stereo sound and basic MP3 tags (artist and title). Coolio!

For those of you, who use the original NVIDIA display driver and have to reinstall it with every kernel update: Here is a little bashscript for your convenience.

#!/bin/bash
sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop
sudo chvt 1
sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-*.run --ui='none' -aNq
sudo /etc/init.d/kdm start
sudo chvt 7

Save it e.g. as ~/.bin/nv_reinst.sh, make it executable (chmod +x ~/.bin/nv_reinst.sh). Then put your NVIDIA driver (only the newest version please) into ~/Downloads/ (or change the path above). Now run your script.

Attention: Save all your work, since kdm will be stopped! You’ll lose all unsaved work!

And here another syntax file for Nano. This time it highlights the /etc/apt/sources.list:

## syntax highlighting for /etc/apt/sources.list
 
syntax "apt/sources.list" "sources\.list(\.old|~)?$"
# component
color brightmagenta "^deb(-src)? ((http|file|ftp):/[^ ]+|cdrom:\[[^\]]+\]/|cdrom:\[[a-zA-Z0-9\._-\(\) ]+\]/) [^ ]+ .+$"
# distribution
color brightred "^deb(-src)? ((http|file|ftp):/[^ ]+|cdrom:\[[^\]]+\]/|cdrom:\[[a-zA-Z0-9\._-\(\) ]+\]/) [^ ]+"
# URI
color brightgreen "(http|file|ftp):/[^ ]+"
# cdroms
# [^\]] does not work…
color brightgreen "cdrom:\[[a-zA-Z0-9\._-\(\) ]+\]/"
# deb / deb-src
color cyan "^deb"
color brightblue "^deb-src"
# comments
color brightyellow "#.*"

Use the snippet below in your ~/.nanorc or /etc/nanorc file to highlight *.ini files like php.ini in Nano.

# ini highlighting
syntax "ini" "\.ini(\.old|~)?$"
 
# values
color brightred "=.*$"
# equal sign
color green "="
# numbers
color brightblue "-?[0-9\.]+\s*($|;)"
# ON/OFF
color brightmagenta "ON|OFF|On|Off|on|off\s*($|;)"
# sections
color brightcyan "^\s*\[.*\]"
# keys
color cyan "^\s*[a-zA-Z0-9_\.]+"
# comments
color brightyellow ";.*$"

I was recently annoyed by how URLs were started in KDE: I used an antiquated firefox command to run an URL in a new tab (firefox-remote "OpenURL(%u, new-window)") which does the job quite well. But: If you have no running firefox instance this command will simply do nothing. Right - nothing! You’ll have to start firefox manually and click once again on the link (in konversation, kopete or wherever).

But the newer firefox versions (I don’t know when this feature was added) support the firefox -newtab %u command. This is all you need if you only use firefox. Configure KDE via kcontrol to use this command as a standard webbrowser.

This was still not enough for me though, as I regularly switch to konqueror or opera, because firefox is sometimes to slow for a quick browse. This is what I came up with:

The default output of Apaches Options +Indexes doesn’t look good at all. Very 1990 something… But - as with pretty much any open source open source software - there are tons of options, which enable you to change everything to your likings!