I’ve no idea when Amazon.co.uk lauched their MP3 store and I’ve no idea when they released their Linux client for downloading the MP3s you purchased. I don’t care, I just want to say I’m really impressed Amazon have considered us Linux users. Well done Amazon!

Not only that but the MP3s are DRM free, encoded using variable bit rates aiming at an average of 256 kilobits per second (kbps), album cover art is included with each song and the tracks are typically cheaper than iTunes. Well done again. Doubtless some would want an Open Source client and unencumbered formats such as Ogg and FLAC, but I’m pretty happy with what Amazon have on offer so long as it works. Which it does

However, the Linux MP3 downloader client is 32-bit only. Not so good, but it can be successfully installed in 64-bit Ubuntu. Here’s how I did in on Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 64-bit.

 wget -c http://frozenfox.freehostia.com/cappy/getlibs-all.deb
 dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb    
 wget "http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/dmusic/help/amd-installer-redirect.html/ref=dm_amd_linux_ubuntu?ie=UTF8&forceos=LINUX&callingPage=%2Fgp%2Fdmusic%2Fhelp%2Famd.html&linux_Ubuntu.x=1" -O amazonmp3.deb
 dpkg -i --force-architecture amazonmp3.deb
 getlibs /usr/bin/amazonmp3

I recently discovered that ‘tcrequant’ (part of the transcode suite of tools) has been deprecated. Worst still I found that when I ran ‘tcrequant’ on my 64-bit Linux workstation is was corrupting the video. See the links below for details.

• transcode 1.1.0 Final Release
• [transcode-users] tcrequant status

Therefore I decided to get the M2VRequantiser code from Metakine working on both 32-bit and 64-bit Linux as a replacement for ‘tcrequant’.

M2VRequantiser accepts the raw MPEG2 video data (not VOB) from the standard input and writes the recompressed frames to the standard output.  M2VRequantiser takes two arguments. The first one is a floating point value specifying the ratio of compression. The second is the size of the M2V, since the data is streamed to M2VRequantiser it cannot know the M2V size. The following command would recompress ‘original.m2v’, whose size is 1024000 bytes, by a factor of 1.25.

M2VRequantiser 1.25 1024000 < original.m2v > requantised.m2v

I’ve only tested on 32-bit and 64-bit Linux, specifically Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10. It works for me but I’d be interested to get your feedback.

• See the Code section of my site for the download and more details.

M2VRequantiser was released on April 23rd 2009 to help celebrate St. George’s Day.

Recently I’ve been trying to get the new BBC iPlayer Desktop for Linux working on my Ubuntu workstation, it requires Adobe AIR 1.5 and Adobe Flash 10. Despite installing both on my Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit workstation the BBC iPlayer Desktop for Linux installer crashes Firefox everytime I try to install it, so more research required. Still, I am running Thwirl just fine having install Adboe Air 1.5 as per the method method below

Installing Adobe AIR 1.5 on Ubuntu

If you’re interested in trying to get BBC iPlayer Desktop for Linux installed the see my notes below.

Installing BBC iPlayer Desktop for Linux on Ubuntu