Web hosting billing - 477Chapter 19Playing Music and Video .Select files to
477Chapter 19Playing Music and Video .Select files to play To select from the files in the playlist, use the previoustrack and next track buttons in the main XMMS window. The selected file ishighlighted. Click the Play button to play that file. Alternatively, you can dou- ble-click any file in the playlist to start it playing. .Delete files from the playlist To remove files from the playlist, select the fileor files you want to remove (use the next track and previous track buttons), right-click the playlist window, and click Remove.Selected. The selected filesare removed. .Save the playlist To save the current playlist, hold the right mouse buttondown on the List button and then select Playlist.Save List from the pop-upmenu. Browse to the directory you want, and then type the name you wanttoassign to the playlist and click OK. The filename should end with a .m3uextension, such as monkees_hits.m3u. .Load the playlist To reload a saved playlist, click the List button. Select aplaylist from the directory in which you saved it and click OK. There is also a tiny set of buttons on the bottom of the Playlist Editor screen. Theseare the same buttons as those on the main screen used for selecting different tracksor playing, pausing, stopping, or ejecting the current track. Using MIDI Audio PlayersMIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) files are created from synthesizers andother electronic music devices. They tend to be smaller than other kinds of audiofiles because instead of storing the complete sounds, they contain information aboutthe notes played, tempo and articulation. You can think of a MIDI file as electronicsheet music. The MIDI player reproduces the notes to sound like a huge variety ofMIDI instruments. There are lots of sites on the Internet for downloading MIDI files. Try the Ifni MIDIMusic site (www.ifni.com), for example, which contains songs by the Beatles, LedZeppelin, Nirvana, and others organized by album. Most of the MIDI music is prettysimple, but you can have some fun playing with it. Linux distributions that include the KDE desktop (such as Fedora Core) often comewith the kmid MIDI player. Kmid provides a GUI interface for midi music, includingthe capability to display karaoke lyrics in real time. To start kmid in Fedora, selectSound & Video.KMid (or type kmid &from a Terminal window). Performing Audio File Conversion and CompressionThere are many different formats for storing and compressing speech and musicfiles. Because music files can be large, they are usually stored in a compressed for- mat. While MP3 has been the compression format of choice, Ogg Vorbis is quicklybecoming a favorite for compressing music in the open source community. OggVorbis has the added benefit of not being encumbered by patents as MP3 is.