Skip to content

Sound and Video

Joining with one another in holy songs of praise and of the Spirit, using your voice in songs and making melody in your heart to the Lord;

Ephesians 5:19 (BBE)
PulseAudio Volume Control


PulseAudio Volume Control is a proxy go-between for the hardware and the underlying kernel sound component that provides device drivers for sound cards; ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). PulseAudio was added to ensure compatibility with the widest array of hardware.

Output Devices


Pulse Audio Volume Control is easy use and pretty to look at. But, if something isn’t working right…
Open a Terminal [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[T] and type:
alsamixer

AlsaMixer Playback View


Move to each sound control in AlsaMixer with the left and right arrow keys (the selected device will show in red letters). There are usually too many devices to show in one window; keep hitting the right arrow key the first time through to see them all. There are three different views: Playback [F3], Capture [F4] and All [F5]. Adjust volume with the up and down arrow keys. “00” means no volume, “MM” means mute. Toggle mute/unmute with the [M] key. Exit AlsaMixer and return to the command prompt by hitting the [Esc] key. Or, exit out of both by clicking the “X” in the top right corner, going to File > Close Window, or pressing [Shift]+[Ctrl]+[Q].


For more info about ALSA, see the AlsaProject homepage and the man page. PulseAudio Volume Control is free and open source software licensed under the GPL. PulseAudio is free and open source software licensed under the LGPL.


Gnash


Gnash was the GNU Flash movie player and we’ve traditionally used the standalone version of it to play SWF files. Official Flash support from Adobe ended December 31, 2020 and Ubuntu removed Gnash from it’s repositories by the 20.04 release. But Remy van Elst resurrected Gnash as a Snap and worked with us to ensure our users can continue to use Gnash enjoy the 166 Christian games and videos we include.

A Flash Bible Game and a Fun Bible Stuff game running in (resurrected) Gnash


Our Flash page has a bit more info about Flash and Gnash (and Remy van Elst). GNU Gnash was/is free and open source software licensed under the GPL.


VLC


VLC is the jack-of-all-audio-and-video trades. To put it simply, VLC will play just about anything you throw at it (besides SWF files). Some of the many features of this app include frame-by-frame advance, customizable toolbars, live recording of streaming video, conversion of video between different formats and support for skins.

VLC playing "Distance Between Heaven and Hell"


Format support: 3ivX, AAC, AC3, Alaw/µlaw, Cinepak, DIVX, Dirac, DTS, DV, E-AC-3, FLAC, H.264, Indeo Video, MACE, Mod, MP3, MPEG, MP4, On2, Real Video, Theora, VC-2, Vorbis, WMV… Note: DVD Movie support for DVD players (optical drives) must be added before VLC will play one – see our simple how-to here. Playlist support: VLC will play html, xspf, m3u, m3u8, asx, b4s, or pls playlists and save playlists as html, m3u, m3u8 and xspf.

VLC playing "Before You End Up Here"


Projection support: If you’re using Impress, Lyricue, OpenLP or OpenSong in your church service, or other public event; don’t miss out on the video presentation possibilities of VLC. Besides using hot keys to control video; you can also adjust video sharpness in real-time; magnify, zoom and rotate video; transform the view to different angles; use A/V sync and subtitle settings and add text and/or your church logo to the space you specify on the video.


More Information 10 Useful Features [How To Geek], How To Stream Online Videos And Music Using VLC Media Player? [FOSSBytes], VLC @ pling, and Internet Radio [wikiHow]. And see Skins, a Streaming HowTo, the Support Guide and the User Guide at VideoLAN. To dynamically convert any iTunes Podcast to a “normal” RSS XML feed (for VLC or other player), visit Feed Flipper. Also see How To Convert Media Files in Linux at Linux.com and How To Batch Convert Media Files in VLC at Tech Junkie. VLC is free and open source software licensed under under the GPL with some libraries licensed under the LGPL.


Xfburn


Xfburn is lean, low-resource application to write to or burn (re-)writable optical media; CDs/DVDs/Blu-rays. It can create audio CDs, blank rewritable discs (CD-RW/DVD-RWs), create and write ISO images and data compositions. It’s very simple and straightforward burning app that works with most any burner.

Main Window


Xfburn is free, open source software licensed under GPL.