Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of computer network protocols that allows devices to connect and share files seamlessly. It is like accessing a computer and sharing files in your local network except that there is zero configuration required and you can simply plug in your device and get connected.
By setting your Linux computer as a UPnP AV server, you will be able to access your collection of music, photos and videos that reside in your computer wherever you are within the house.
Below are some of the applications that can turn your Linux computer into a UPnP AV server:
As technology progresses, numerous different types of media, and thus new file formats, emerge. This can pose a problem, though. With audio formats ranging from AIFF to WAV, trying to listen to music or even watch videos on your computer can become difficult and possibly tedious.
Today, I will show you some of the top free media converters for Windows to allow you be able to use, watch and listen to all your video and audio files.
Previously, I have discussed how you can use your Linux computer as a media center. Now, if you are not in front of your Linux machine most of the time, but still want to access all your media files from any internet connected devices such as your smart phone, workplace computer, PDA or even PS3, the only option is to set up your Linux computer as a media server and stream your multimedia content to wherever you are over the internet.
This part of the Linux media series will cover the various software that you can use to convert your Linux machine into a media server.
If you are a Windows or Mac user, you will be familiar with Windows Media Center or Front Row that both have the ability to turn your computer into a Media Center PC. Linux users don’t have such luck as most distros do not come with a media center application pre-installed.
If you are like me who is a Linux user and owns a huge collection of music, videos and pictures, the world is not over for you yet. There are many open-source applications that you can use to turn your Linux machine into a lean, mean media center.
There is a multitude of software on the web. Of those, some of the coolest are media players.
Today, we will be looking at some of the best media players on the web for Windows. (There have been a couple of MakeUseOf polls on best audio players and video players as well.)
Ready? Let’s go.
VLC is one, if not the, best media player ever created. It is lightweight, portable, and can play almost any media format out there (incl. videos downloaded from sites like Youtube). VLC can even be used as a streaming media server, can play DVD’s, can be used as an audio decoder, and doesn’t require external, extra codecs to run.
In no way do we wish to encourage you to infringe copyright.
On an unrelated note we’d like to share some tools for the purpose of ripping, converting, downloading and backing up videos.
Since we’re starting from scratch the first thing I suggest you download is a Windows codec pack. Codecs are necessary to play various different ‘digital streams’ (thank you Wikipedia for making me sound smarter) and files. Varun has alsom briefly covered it in his article about Playing Unplayable Videos on your PC.
There have no doubt been plenty of services out there whereby you can download video to your mobile telephone. Some of them are good, most are bad. But a new program from VeVeo called vTap is right up there. And best of all, its FREE.
Videos are everywhere these days. They flood your inbox, they find their way into social media sites. They even allow you to watch them at the most convenient time for you. But none of them on the mobile front, can mess with vTap.
FAVC is a free collection of tools used to convert your media files, such as AVI, MP4, WMV and more to a DVD disk. FAVC is currently for Windows only. You can convert one video or multiple videos to a disk, and it includes automatic menu creation.
FAVC is a frontend for a handful of other free software. It includes:
(Encoder)
Increasingly, more and more people are turning to internet-based solutions to consume their content. Many of them are switching to solutions that hook up to televisions. I find the best solution with the most control is a Media Center PC. Some people, however, do not turn to this option due to the lack of flexibility in the Windows Media Center software. I am going to tell you about some of the best FREE Windows Media Center alternatives that I have found.
MediaPortal – MediaPortal is an open source alternative to the Windows-based Media Center software.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past years figuring out how to get my DVD collection onto my PC so I can use my Home Theater PC (HTPC) to play my library on my TV. The following is the two step process I’ve come up with to do this; all other programs I’ve used either are not free, install spyware, or desync the audio.
Install and use DVDFab HD Decrypter.
The settings here are pretty straightforward. Select “Full Disk” and where you want to save the file. Click start, and about 40 minutes later you will have your DVD on your hard drive and ready to encode.
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