Multimedia Software
Translations:
it
Section dedicated to all the multimedia-oriented software: video, audio, and more.
Encoding / Multimedia Format Conversion
| Suggested | Name | Description | Windows | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ | FFMpeg | Pretty famous encoding software, works from command line but is extremely flexible. It's really worth learning. Among the other features, you can record your screen directly from command line. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Handbrake | "Now with 21 essential vitamins and minerals", a complete encoder mainly thought for DVD compression. | ✓ | ✓ | |
| ✓ | X Media Recode | X Media is nothing more than one of many GUIs for FFmpeg, it's freeware and has a lot of ready-made profiles for mobile phones and various readers. Very stable and pretty easy to use but has some advanced features too. | ✓ | ❌ |
| MediaCoder | Another FFmpeg GUI, easy to use, but does give access to advanced features. | ✓ | ❌ |
Disc creation and burning
| Suggested | Name | Description | Windows | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ | K3B | The Famous Burning software that comes packed with KDE/Plasma, easy to use, fast and feature-complete. | ❌ | ✓ |
| ✓ | CDBurnerXP | The free version gives the basic tools to burn data discs and audio discs, as well as copy unprotected supports. Extremely stable and easy to use; great for people who don't have great needs, works great with DVDs too. | ✓ | ❌ |
| Brasero | The Gnome Desktop couterpart of K3B, a good disc burning tool. | ❌ | ✓ | |
| InfraRecorder | Very spartan tool that allows the creation of data discs, as well as video and audio; includes support for disc copy and image creation. Small and practical, fits the smallest USB thumb drive and can be used as main burning tool without any issue. | ✓ | ❌ | |
| ✓ | IMGBurn | Small and fast program that allows to write any kind of disc image, ISO or any other kind of format is supported. | ✓ | ❌ |
| ✓ | XFBurn | XFCE's couterpart to K3B and Brasero, extremely lightweight and sufficient for the users who need just the basics. | ❌ | ✓ |
Music
| Suggested | Name | Description | Windows | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ | Amarok | Shipped with KDE, Amarok is a great music organizer and listening program. Among the other features, you can download lyrics without changing window or do researches on the song makers on wikipedia. | ✓ | ✓ |
| SongBird | A mature open rouce project, fast and with a very good audio, allows to manage your music collection in a pretty well organized manner. | ✓ | ❌ | |
| MediaMonkey | The free version is very complete and supports direct transfer on MP3 player as well as encoding. Some options require the purchase of a license. | ✓ | ❌ | |
| ✓ | MPD | If you want to make your life more complex (but not even that much) you can "take up" a MPD server on Linux and then use a MPD client to listen to music. Extremely lightweight and fast, but this doesn't mean it's missing features: automatic playlist creation, lyrics download, author information are just some of the many features of this powerful service. | ❌ | ✓ |
| ✓ | ncmpcpp | Behind this unreadable name hides a powerful ncurses client for MPD, great to bring an old PC back to life with a linux-box without window manager. | ❌ | ✓ |
| Ario | Good GUI for MPD, looks like RhythmBox. Being only a piece of the audio player, the startup is really fast. | ❌ | ✓ | |
| WinAmp | "The sacred monster" of music players, great in the free version but some features need a license (Was unmaintained but it's coming back!) | ✓ | ❌ | |
| Zinf | Simple and powerful, Zinf allows to listen to music in many formats, as well as radio via RTP and SHOUTcast/Icecast HTTP. | ✓ | ❌ |
Video players
| Suggested | Name | Description | Windows | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ | VLC | The "format eater", a light and fast player that is able to read practically any known format, like AVI, MP4, FLV or even WebM. Allows to apply post-production effects in realtime to the view, like changing the brightness. | ✓ | ✓ |
| FFDShow + MPCHC | A suite of decoders usable with Windows Media Player or with the more lightweight MediaPlayer Classic. Reads a whole lot of formats and allows to apply heavy post-production effects in real time. K-Lite Codec Pack has a ready-to-use version that requires just a few steps to be installed. | ✓ | ❌ | |
| ✓ | FFPlay | A piece of FFmpeg that is able to play any format, good for machines that we don't want to burden with more softeware. | ✓ | ✓ |
| ✓ | MPV | A Fork of Mplayer e Mplayer2, MPV uses FFmpeg's Acceleration API for the quickest decoding possible, a great player, minimal in the looks but not in the features. And it's not even resource-heavy. | ✓ | ✓ |
DVD Authoring
| Suggested | Name | Description | Windows | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ | DVDStyler | A great DVD Authoring software. Extremely flexible and easy to use. Allows to create any kind of menu you could think of. | ✓ | ✓ |
| DVDFlick | Another Authoring Software, easy to use but its default themes are really limited. Creating a custom one is not really easy. | ✓ | ❌ |
Video Editing and Post-Production
| Suggested | Name | Description | Windows | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PiTiVi | A great tool to work on our movies using a timeline. Easy to use and pretty stable. Not compatible with all formats. | ❌ | ✓ | |
| ✓ | AviDemux | A decent post-production tool, supports a lot of formats and it's fast. | ✓ | ✓ |
| VirtualDub | Has exactly the same features of avidemux, but it's not compatible with Mpeg2 movies (In that case you should use VirtualDubMod ) | ✓ | ❌ | |
| VLMC | Very promising and with a simple interface, this brand-new software needs to kept an eye on, because it might be a blast. | ✓ | ✓ | |
| ✓ | OpenShot | A video Editing software that is very simple and rich in its effects. The new Version 2 has a lot of improvements. | ✓ | ✓ |
| FFDiaporama | A good program that allows us to create fantastic slideshows with our favourite music as a background. | ✓ | ✓ | |
| DVDSlideShow | A series of command line tools that allows us to create nice photo slideshows ready to be burned on DVDs. | ❌ | ✓ | |
| DVDSlideShowGUI | Don't mix it with the previous one, it's a cocktail of software that allows us to create fantastic slideshows out of nothing. It even has an option to apply random transitions, so you can have great results in zero time. | ✓ | ❌ | |
| ✓ | KdenLive | Another time, the people from KDE/Calligra amazes us with a fantastic video editing program, fast, stable and bursting-point full of features. Absolutely Needs a try. Windows version is a bit difficult to set up. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cinelerra | This video editor made the history, and sprays power and features from each of its bits. Can be really complex to use. | ❌ | ✓ |
Digital Music Score
| Suggested | Name | Description | Windows | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ | TuxGuitar | Great Software for creation, editing and playing of guitar tabs, fully compatible with GuitarPro formats, and read only with PowerTab formats. Has its own format .tg. | ✓ | ✓ |
| MuseScore | Another good open source digital music score. Pretty new, but still very functional. I suggest the most curious people to try it. | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Hydrogen | An extremely powerful Drum Machine for Linux. A boon for the people who like these kind of things. There is a preview version for Windows and a Beta version for MacOS (Intel CPUs only) | ✓ | ✓ | |
| RimShot | Another drum machine. The interface is simple and gets the job done. | ✓ | ✓ | |
| ✓ | LMMS | Amazing music creation software that reminds a lot of FruityLoops, pretty hard to use at the beginning, but when you get confident with the interface you can create real art. | ✓ | ✓ |
Audio Editing
| Suggested | Name | Description | Windows | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ | Audacity | An open-source software for audio editing. Fast and stable, can be extended with plugins that can be found on the official website. | ✓ | ✓ |
Misc:
| Name | Description | Windows | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|
| CamStudio | A software that allows to capture video and audio of all the actions that happen on your desktop and record them in videos that can be played on any player or PC or even in Flash format for online play. | ✓ | ❌ |
| CDex | Software that allows to encode audio CD tracks in WAV, MP3 or OGG Vorbis formats. | ✓ | ❌ |
| OBS Studio | A software that allows to capture videos of what is happening on your screen. Allows direct rendering in YouTube-compatible formats as well as direct streaming on twitch or similar. | ✓ | ✓ |
| GuitarCodex Plus | A great software for people who want to learn to play guitar. Gives a complete guide on chords and finger positions. | ✓ | ❌ |