javaguy

Followup: There's definitely something wrong with how my .mp3 files are encoded. Can somebody tell me in simple terms how to capture mp3 (or .wav) files from my sound card? Also, can lame convert between mp3 and .wav or can't it? I've tried lame myfile.mp3 myfile.wav but the resulting .wav file is just static.

This is what I get:

Certainly not on mine, anyway.

They're both there and have the little green checkmark on them.

I'm trying to transfer some cassette tapes to CD. My first step was to plug my tape player into the line-in on my sound card and capture the audio. I have a cheap sound card but was pleasantly surprised by the mp3s I was able to get this way. So I fired up k3b and clicked the Audio CD quickstart thingy, and it said to drag and drop sound files into it. So I dropped my mp3s into it, and it gave me an error dialog saying this is an unsupported file format. It strikes me as a little odd that k3b doesn't support mp3 for making audio CDs, but anyway I converted them to .wav files, verified that they work, then dragged and dropped them into the project. Same result--unsupported file format. Anyway, I seem to recall hearing somewhere that the CDs you put in your CD player basically just have .wav files in them and that if you just copy .wav files onto a blank CD you can play it. That sounds too good to be true, but I tried it, and sure enough, it was too good to be true. So what weird and esoteric sound file format do I need to make an audio CD, and how can I make it work with k3b?

Has anybody here ever been able to convert a .wav or mp3 to a PureVoice .qcp file? It's the kind that certain cell phones use. Qualcomm has a program called pvconv, but all it does is say that the input is not a valid .wav file (even though it is). There's a web site called media-convert.com that claims to convert these for free, but I have yet to see it successfully convert anything. Is there a way to do it with mencoder maybe?

Ugh. Harder than I thought. I've got a very watchable mpeg of the movie, but I can't seem to get a DVD out of it. Mandvd makes a DVD file structure, and when I click the button to watch what I've created to test it, everything is fine. But I've tried all three ways to make it into a DVD: Making an ISO and runing cdrecord at the command line, telling mandvd to burn it directly and having mandvd launch k3b and burning from there. I even tried making an ISO and cdrecord a couple of times just to be sure. Every time I got a DVD where I could start watching the movie, but then it froze up or went black within about five minutes. I tried dvdstyler, but it says that all mpeg files are an invalid format. I Googled this and found a number of forums saying to use Avidemux to make the mpeg, but I had already done that. Avidemux even has an "automagic" DVD function to encode mpegs for DVD authoring, but even files created by this are in an invalid format according to dvdstyler. So much for dvdstyler. So I'm off to try qdvdauthor. Wish me luck.

One more update: As you've all probably guessed already, I just needed to keep tinkering with the mixer settings. Now it works great, and I just have to figure out how to do the DVD authoring thing.

Okay, I'm a 'tard. My mixer settings were bad. However, even with the input set right and to max volume, I now get a video with very, very quiet sound.

Is it possible my sound card just sucks? xvidcap doesn't seem to capture sound either. What a cool utility, though!

Still no sound.

Tried it like this: Same results. Actually, I've tried it a couple hundred different ways now. :(

Still no luck on the audio. Anybody? I'm out of ideas. :(

More follow-up: Rebooted system, now have sound in tvtime. No clue about that but happy it works. When I record, though, I get .avi with no sound. I have verified that I do hear sound when I play other .avi files. :) Using this command to record: mencoder tv:// -tv driver=v4l:norm=ntsc:input=0:width=640:height=480:volume=80 -of avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vbitrate=4000 -oac lavc -o record.avi -endpos 0:15 I think I'm getting close!

Success! But failure. :( It was working fine when I watched it on wintv, so I knew the connection was sound. The secret to recording was to add the norm=ntsc option. That gets me very good quality .avi files. But... Suddenly there's no sound! Neither when I watch in tvtime nor when I record an .avi. I had sound last night. What the hell. My worst fear is that the card's sound function suddenly blew. It's a used card, but sheesh. It was working--hardware-wise, anyway--just last night.

It's definitely not a bad physical connection because I can watch it using tvtime, and it looks perfect. I'm in the U.S. That means NTSC, right? I seem to recall I tried changing that while watching it on tvtime, and I couldn't get a picture using anything other than NTSC. I'll check again tonight. I don't understand. (Sorry--I'm really new at this.) I'm already using 32-bit Mandriva even though I have a 64-bit box b/c numerous people have advised me to wait on installing 64-bit until it's a little more stable. Looks like I'm going to be spending some time in the man page.

I don't think it's a processor power issue. I just upgraded my mobo and got a 64-bit processor. I tried it without the vbitrate and got the same result. What do I need to do to check out the ntsc/pal issue? Here's what the .avi I get looks like: http://sammckee.com/snapshot1.png

I installed tvtime, and now I can watch. This stuff is complex, and while I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person and am sure I could learn the intricacies of it all, the bottom line is that I just wanna watch some TV and record some videos. :) So I was very glad to find a software package that could more or less automagically configure itself.

WoW runs fine for me under Cedega. It's WC3 I can't get to run. I'll try it under Wine when I get home tonight. Incidentally, Lego Designer runs great under Wine...my new addiction. I'm champing at the bit for StarCraft 2. I hope Wine/Cedega will support it. I can tell a game is going to be awesome if my wife rolls her eyes when she sees the trailer.

I'm trying this, and I get an .avi file with a severely distorted picture, sort of a double-ghost image, very little color. Any idea what I might be doing wrong? (I can watch using tvtime with no problem, btw.)

I recently installed a TV card and am trying to watch kdetv but can't do the "channel wizard" thing. It says VBI decoder is not running and that I can turn it on in the settings dialog, but when I go there, although there's a "VBI Encoder" tab, there's nothing listed there and absolutely no indication of what I need to do.

Reminds me of a news story I read a few years ago about a certain billionaire--let's call him BG--giving a press conference about a study that said the total cost of running Linux was greater than the total cost of running, um, a certain other OS. The news story had a link to the study, so I clicked on it and actually read the study, only to discover that the study said no such thing. Unfortunately most people reading the infotainment du jour probably didn't take the extra step of going to the source and checking the facts.

Venture capitalists take on risky investments, yes, but not stupid investments. They do their homework and take calculated risks based on facts and reasonable expectations. I'd be a lot more worried if they couldn't get financing at all. To an investor that's just another type of investment opportunity. If a company actually has a sound plan to turn itself around, investors are all over it.

I think I've narrowed it down to this. The command alsactl names causes the whole system to freeze up. :(

There's nothing sound- or jack-related in syslog.