Hari's Corner

I have been playing around with Hydrogen (an excellent drum machine for Linux) and as I mentioned in the multimedia authoring category, it's a very intuitive little application. Requires no MIDI (as it provides its own MIDI driver) and has export to WAV and MID.

Here is a little rhythm track I created. Download is in OGG format.

Hope you enjoy it

download link (less than 1 MB - go play )

I have quite a few recommendations for Multimedia authoring on Linux. Here's my top 5 for this category.

Audacity An excellent audio editing application: simple interface for recording and editing sound clips. Also has some extra features like audio effects and tone generation. Can export to OGG natively and also to MP3 if LAME is installed.

Hydrogen This is a very easy-to-use drum machine for Linux. It's actually useable without too much configuration and its interface is very, very intuitive. You can generate quite a few great rhythms with this one within minutes and also has a MIDI export option.

Blender This is a very feature-rich 3d creation tool for Linux with the ability to create quite complex scenes and animation. The interface could be a little bewildering to a newbie, but it is quite a productive tool for 3d enthusiasts. Has a variety of export formats as well.

Cinelerra This is a full-fledged video editing suite for Linux. I haven't actually used it, but it is quite popular in the Linux world among media enthusiasts. Deserves a place in the top 5 in this category.

ardour A full fledged digital audio workstation for Linux. Again, like Cinelerra, I haven't used it, but it looks like an impressive piece of software and I guess it deserves a place here.

I'm sure there are a lot of very worthy contenders for the top 5 in this particular category, so feel free to debate this list and add your own suggestions as well.

I've always wanted to document any tricky steps to getting things done in Linux and MIDI is a very tricky one indeed. In fact, for most of us, the only way to play MIDI music is to install TiMidity++ and use it as an ALSA sequencer. I've struggled though in the past, due to lack of proper documentation for this and so decided to share my knowledge in a place where others can easily get the bigger picture without getting confused with the details. Note that this is not an extensive article and will not go in-depth into each step, but only to serve as a general guide to MIDI on Linux.

I assume that you've properly installed and configured ALSA drivers and sound generally works in your system. Also I assume that you have a fair idea of how to install and uninstall packages for your particular distribution or know how to compile from source.

The three steps are then:

1. Install TiMidity++. If you are a Debian user, this package is available in the official repositories. Other binary versions may be available. You can also compile from source. Instructions and download location available at the TiMidity website. Binary packages for select distros:
   • Debian package
   • Slackware binaries
   • RPM packages
2. Get some good sound patches. Debian users can use Freepats. But I recommend the eaw patches which are of higher quality. No Debian packages are available, but luckily you can just download it and extract it in any location. You can download the tar.gz here. Just extract it into your home directory. Let's say /home/hari/eawpats.
3. Replace the default TiMidity++ timidity.cfg file (rename the old file to something like timidity.conf.old) with the one in the /home/hari/eawpats/linuxconfig folder. Just edit it to make sure the location points to the directory where you extracted the EAW patches. The config file is located usually in the /etc/timidity/ folder in Debian. I don't know about other distros. Here is how the file looks like. Just change the dir setting to whichever location you extracted the EAW patches to:

   dir /home/hari/eawpats/
source gravis.cfg
source gsdrums.cfg
source gssfx.cfg
source xgmap2.cfg
#mid -> wav: timidity input.mid -Ow1S -s 44100 -o output.wav


All right, you've now installed it. To test it, you need to play a MIDI file. If you have one, just run

timidity filename.mid

from the command line and enjoy the music! If timidity fails with an error message, just check the timidity.cfg file to make sure the path to your patches directory is correct. The EAW patches are excellent and much better than the freepats package in Debian, so the extra trouble to download and install it is worth it.

Now you have got MIDI playback. What if you want to use TiMidity++ as your ALSA sequencer device? Well, for this you have to issue this command from the command line:

timidity -iA -B8,2 -Os

This basically means that you are running timidity as an ALSA sequencer device (-iA) and you've set the buffer fragmensts to 8,2 (-B8,2) and the output device as ALSA (-Os). There you go. Now you can play MIDI files from KDE also. Don't forget to check out the TiMidity++ man and documentation pages as well.

You must run the above command every time you boot Linux if you want to use TiMidity++ as an ALSA back end so that you can play MIDI files from KDE (KMid) without using the timidity command line every time. The added advantage is that you can use MIDI composing tools like NoteEdit or Rosegarden without any additional setup because ALSA automatically recognizes the MIDI devices. So I recommend that you add this command to your startup scripts.

Hope this is clear. If you have any feedback or questions about this, please drop a comment here.

Are you hosting any graphics that you found on the web in a free image hosting account like photobucket or Flickr for use on your blog or personal website? You'd better think again, because you might just be violating their ToS (Terms of Service).

I have now transferred all the images used in my blog articles from Flickr to my own hosting account, thanks to the timely warning issued by Creative Hedgehog. I believe that Flickr only allows you to host photos belonging to you and is not meant for generic website graphics. Fine. I confirmed this with them by e-mail and I immediately took down most of the images I host with Flickr. Now I thought of hosting them on another free image hosting service, photobucket, but I decided to play safe and confirm by e-mail whether I could store images which I don't own the copyright of. In other words, if I write an article on George W. Bush, could I host a picture of him I found somewhere on the web at photobucket for use on my blog? The reply I got was rather cryptic:

If you own the image or have permission from the owner to copy the image, then you can host it here. Otherwise you may be infringing on copyright which is a violation of our Terms of Service.

In other words, if you don't own a picture, you cannot host it at photobucket. But the problem is that, most people tend to use pictures they find on the web for use in their blogs. I can think of situations where "fair use" might come into play, particularly with photos of prominent people like actors, politicians and so on.

From what I have come to understand from my correspondence with photobucket support, suppose I write an article on George W. Bush and want to use a picture of him within the article, I either have to:

• Take a picture of him myself or,
• Write to some major media source which has a copyrighted image of him and get their permission to host and use it.

The first alternative is almost impossible in most situations and the second is a big hassle, particularly because most of these huge website owners might not respond to individual e-mails and secondly it might be hard to ascertain the true copyright holder of many useful images that you find on the web. Therefore complying to the law is next to impossible and so, naturally, most people take the easy way out. All over the web you see thousands of pictures used in websites which just directly link from the original source in question (which amounts to bandwidth stealing) or hosted at photobucket or Flickr or similar image hosting sites (which amounts to a technical breach of copyright). There is a third alternative, by the way, which is to use public domain images, but finding suitable ones for use in context is a more difficult task.

I am yet to understand the full implication of copyright law in such situations. I am entirely willing to attribute the original copyright holder in each instance of such use. However, I have no idea whether such use is (technically) allowed or not under the "fair use" clause. Most of these copyright holders probably couldn't care less either way if you used their images as long as you didn't do so with an intent to steal their work or benefit commercially from them, but unfortunately the image hosting services in question are understandably rather particular about this since they don't want to throw themselves open to any potential litigation since "fair use" is a rather subjective concept which can be contested by Law.

So if you are in the habit of using graphics which don't belong to you and host it on some free image hosting site, then beware, for you run the risk of your account being deleted at any time. To be on the safe side, always credit the original source in question and clarify with your image hosting provider whether such use is permitted or not.

In the meantime, this seems to be a good read on the subject.

The next set of recommendations are for the category Media players (audio and video in the top 50 Linux apps. Here are my top 5 in this category. As always, feel free to make your own recommendations and suggestions.

xine My favourite video player for Linux. Need I say more?

MPlayer Another very good general purpose media player for Linux. Can play most audio and video formats and is one of the more popular media plugins in Linux.

amaroK This is a good audio player for KDE. I like the way it integrates with KDE (being a KDE user) and its playlist feature.

TiMidity++ A software MIDI synthesizer for Linux. Unless you are one of the few lucky people to own a sound card which actually has hardware MIDI support in Linux, you'll need this to play your MIDI music. Must have if you need MIDI playback in Linux (you also need to download some free sound patches to use it though).

X Multimedia System Surprisingly, many people still prefer this slightly dated audio player for Linux. The wide variety of plugins and skins available for it seem to keep it popular as ever.

So what do you think?

The next cartoon character in the line - Dharmaprakash.

Occupation: Local "dada"
Favourite hobbies: Collecting "mamool" (donations) from local traders and evicting troublesome tenants from low-rent apartments for a fee.
Punch-line: "Don't cross my path. It's a bad omen for you!"