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8.13. Lab Exercise
Exercise 1: Playing Music Using Rhythmbox. You have recently installed Ubuntu and want to play and organise your music files, listen to music podcasts and Internet radio. List the steps that you would take.
1. On the Application menu, point to Sound & Video and then click Rhythmbox Music Player.
2. To start importing individual music files into Rhythmbox, right-click Library and click Import File.
3. In the Import File into Library dialogue box, navigate to the folder from which you want to import the files.
4. Select the files that you want to import and click Open.
5. Select the music tracks that you want to play and the Play button to start playing the selected track.
6. To play music from a podcast of your choice, right-click the Podcast option in the Source list and select
New Podcast Feed.
7. Enter the podcast feed URL in the New Podcast Feed text box and click Add.
8. To play a podcast episode, select the episode that you want to play and click the Play button.
9. To listen to Internet radio, click the Radio source in the Source pane.
10.Double-click on the radio station of your choice to listen to the streaming media.
11.To add a new radio station to the existing list of stations, click New Internet Radio Station and paste the URL of the new radio station in the URL of Internet radio station text box.
12.Click Add to add the radio station in the existing list.
13.You can add many more Internet radio stations in the same way and listen to your favourite radio stations with just a click of your mouse.
Exercise 2: Playing and Extracting Audio CDs. You have built up an impressive CD collection over the years and you would like to play these on your Ubuntu desktop, retrieve details about the music tracks and extract your favourite music tracks onto your computer in a compatible format to be able to play them later. List the steps that you would need to perform to do all that you want.
Procedure 8.13. To play audio CDs:
1. Insert an audio CD in the CD drive of your computer. The Sound Juicer CD player and ripper is launched automatically.
2. Notice that Sound Juicer has fetched the tracks' information from MusicBrainz.org.
3. To play the tracks of your choice, select the particular tracks by selecting the corresponding checkboxes.
4. Click the Play button to play the tracks.
Procedure 8.14. To extract an audio CD:
1. Insert the audio CD into your computer's CD drive.
2. On the Edit menu, click Preferences.
3. In the Preferences dialogue box, click the Output Format drop-down list.
4. Select the format of your choice from the Output Format drop-down list.
5. Select the directory where you want to extract the files from the Music Folder drop-down list.
6. Click Close to exit the Preferences dialogue box.
7. In the Sound Juicer window, select the tracks that you want to extract by selecting the corresponding check boxes.
8. Click the Extract button to start extracting the files.
9. Sound Juicer notifies you after the selected tracks are extracted successfully. Click Open to view the tracks copied on your hard disk.
10. The CD audio tracks are now copied as audio files on your hard disk. You can listen to these tracks by simply double-clicking them.
Exercise 3: Burning Audio CDs. You have recently discovered a Web site from where you can freely down- load hundreds of songs. You do not want these files to occupy the precious space on your computer's hard drive. Therefore, you want to copy these files on audio CDs, so that you can listen to them in future without taking up space on the hard drive.
Procedure 8.15. To burn an audio CD:
1. Insert a blank (recordable) CD in the CD drive of your computer.
2. Click the click the Make Audio CD button. This launches the Brasero Disc Burning application.
3. Click the New Audio Project button.
4. Navigate to the desired folder with the files you wish to add to display its contents.
5. Select the specific audio files that you want to be copied and click the Add button or simply drag each file name to the Files area in the right side of the project window.
6. Once you are sure of the files to be copied to the disk, click the Burn button to start writing the audio files from your computer to the CD.
7. The Disc Burning Setup dialogue box displays. Click Burn to continue.
8. Brasero now starts writing the music files to the media disc.
Exercise 4: Playing Proprietary Multimedia formats. You have a huge collection of music in MP3 format stored on your computer and want to play these music files on your Ubuntu desktop. List the steps that you will need to take to be able install the required multimedia codecs.
Procedure 8.16. To Install a codec plugin using Synaptic Package Manager:
1. On the System menu, point to Administration and then click Synaptic Package Manager. The Synaptic Package Manager window opens.
2. The Multiverse and Restricted repositories are not activated by default in Ubuntu. To activate these repos- itories, on the Settings menu, click Repositories. The Software Sources dialogue box is displayed.
3. To enable the Multiverse and Restricted repositories, select the third and fourth check boxes available on the Ubuntu Software tabbed page, and click Close to exit the dialogue box.
4. You may receive a notification that your repository information has changed. Click Close to exit this mes- sage.
5. Once you return to the Synaptic Package Manager window, you are required to click the Reload button to apply your changes.
6. On clicking the Reload button, the system starts checking the repositories for new, removed or upgraded software packages.
7. To install a software package, you need to first locate the package in the Synaptic Package Manager win- dow.
8. To initiate a search for a specific package, click Search.
9. In the Search field, enter the name of the software package that you are looking for. Click Search to begin the search.
10. Right-click the package to be installed and select Mark for Installation.
11. Once all the required packages are marked, click Apply to start downloading the packages. The Summary
dialogue box is displayed.
12. To go ahead with the marked installations, click Apply on the Summary dialogue box.
13. After all the mark software packages are downloaded and installed, the Changes Applied dialogue box is displayed. Click Close to exit the Changes Applied dialogue box.
14. The check box corresponding to the recently installed software package has changed to green, indicating that the software has been installed successfully.
Exercise 5: Playing DVDs. One of your friends has recently given you a DVD gift box set of your favourite movies of all times. Now, you want to play this DVD in your Ubuntu desktop and enjoy your favourite movies.
Procedure 8.17. To play the DVD in the Movie player:
1. Install the following software packages from the Universe and Multiverse repositories using the Synaptic Package Manager.
• gxine
• libdvdcss2
• libdvdnav4
• libdvdplay0
• libdvdvread3
2. Install the Ubuntu Restricted Extras software package from the Ubuntu repository.
3. Insert the DVD into the DVD drive of your computer. This will automatically launch the Totem and the DVD will start playing.
4. To view the DVD in full screen mode, on the View menu, click Fullscreen. Alternatively, you can simply press F on your keyboard.
5. You can enjoy the DVD in full screen mode. At any point of time, while watching the DVD in fullscreen mode, you can press ESC and return to the Totem window.
6. To configure the preferences settings, on the Edit menu, click Preferences.
7. After specifying your preferences, click Close to exit the dialogue box.
8. To skip to the next frame, on the Go menu, click Skip Forwards.
9. You do not want to view the side bar when playing the DVD, click the Sidebar button.
10. This hides the side bar and now you can view the DVD on a bigger space and simultaneously, have all the playback controls right in front of you.
