To watch videos in Ubuntu, you need to ensure that you have the correct codecs installed. As discussed earlier, some of these codecs are available
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separately due to the legal implications of including them with the Ubuntu system. Although the new process for suggesting and installing codecs should cover most popular types of files, you should still refer to the Ubuntu wiki at http://wiki.ubuntu.com for details of how to install ones that are not recognized.
Using Movie Player To watch videos in Ubuntu, you use the Movie Player (Figure 3-21). Load it by clicking Dash Home from the Launcher and searching for Movie Player.
To watch a video on your hard disk, click Movie > Open, and select the file from the disk.
TIP Another Way to Load Files into Movie Player
You can also load multimedia files into Movie Player by double-clicking them on your desk-top or in the file manager.
Movie Player also supports video streams. To watch a stream, click Movie > Open Location, and enter the Internet address for the stream.
The video feed is then loaded and displayed.
Figure 3-21 Movie Player is a simple and flexible media player.
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Getting DVDs to Work Ubuntu comes with DVD support for unen-crypted DVDs. With the DVD industry being what it is, the majority of DVDs come encrypted, and if you want to watch them, you need to ensure that a software library that can decrypt these DVDs is installed. Unfortu-nately, this software library needs to be installed separately and is not included with Ubuntu. Refer to the Ubuntu restricted formats page at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats for details.
With the library installed, insert a disk into your computer, and Ubuntu will automatically start Movie Player to view the disk. Alternatively, fire up Movie Player, and click Movie > Play Disk to play the DVD. Movie Player doesn’t support DVD menus but you can still use it to play a DVD.
If you are settling down to watch a movie, you may want to configure a few other settings. First click View > Aspect Ratio to select the correct aspect ratio for your screen, and then select View > Fullscreen to switch to full-screen mode. To exit full-full-screen mode, just move your mouse, and some on-screen controls will appear.
TIP Control Movie Player with a Remote Control
Movie Player supports the Linux Infrared Control (LIRC) library so you can use a remote control while watching your media.
If you want to use a remote control with your Ubuntu computer, you need to install the Linux Infrared Control (LIRC) package. LIRC is the library, and it supports a wide range of remote control units.
The first step is to determine which LIRC driver is required for your par-ticular remote control. Take a look at the list of remotes on the LIRC site at www.lirc.org, or use your favorite search engine if your remote is not listed on the site.
LIRC includes a number of built-in drivers. You can see which ones are included by running the following command:
lircd –driver=help
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When you know which driver is required and you know your installed LIRC supports your hardware, you can edit the hardware.conf file in the /etc/lirc file to configure which one is used. Simply set the DRIVERline to the driver you selected. Then restart LIRC:
sudo /etc/init.d/lirc restart
When you press the buttons on your remote control, a code should appear.
This code can be mapped to a button on your remote by editing the lircd.conf file in /etc/lirc. For more information, see http://help.ubuntu.
com/community/LIRC.
Backing Up
Everyone who has used a computer for any length of time has heard the advice, “Back up, back up often, test the backups, repeat.” Few people actu-ally do it. Ignoring this advice is dangerous and can cause the loss of important documents, files, pictures, and more.
To prevent this loss, prudent computer users, regardless of operating sys-tem, pick a method of copying their files to a safe location for storage and use that method on a regular basis. To help you devise a strategy that best suits you, we have come up with a few options to consider. This topic is a big one, and how you deal with it is a very personal decision. Rather than give step-by-step instructions, we mention a few options to consider and leave it to you to research them further and decide on one that looks appropriate and inviting.
Some users find that the easiest thing for them to do is buy an external hard drive and copy all of their files to it every week or two. Others look at this and think to themselves, “There has to be a better way.” Perhaps they noticed that these methods require every single file to be copied every time, even if the file has not changed in ages. In these cases, an incremental backup is ideal, where the computer is told to compare the files in the orig-inal location with stored files in a backup location (like an external hard drive) and copy only new or changed files.
Several GUI programs for backing up are available from the Ubuntu repositories. Each comes with a basic and useful graphic interface that is
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easy to figure out and use, and each is configurable to allow you to do full or incremental backups. A backup program is installed by default and can be found by searching for backupin the Dash. The program lets you con-figure automatic or manual backups, specify the location for those back-ups, specify what will be backed up, set scheduling for automatic backback-ups, restore files from the backup, and more (Figure 3-22).
For users who are a little more advanced (or a little braver) and who love the raw power available from learning a command-line program, the best two programs for backups are rar and rsync, which are both available from the Ubuntu repositories. Once they are installed, you can read the manual pages and learn how to use them by typing man rar or man rsync from a terminal. They are complicated but are also fast and amazingly effective both at making the backups and restoring them.
Unfortunately, this quick mention in a small section of a very diverse chapter can only get you thinking about the need for good backups and help guide you in your search for the perfect method for you. However you decide to back up your data, we strongly encourage you not to ignore the need but to find a way to do it. If you have any questions about this or
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Figure 3-22 The main Backup settings window
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other topics, the Ubuntu community has a large number of very helpful people you can ask for help, and we recommend you start by searching or asking questions in the Ubuntu Forums at http://ubuntuforums.org.