September 2000 LUG Bangalore Meeting Minutes

[Gandalf Mithrandir <gandalf@xxxxxxxxx>]

The September 2000 meeting of the ILUG Bangalore was held in the midst of
bandh's, postponements and pouring rain. The meeting began at 6:30pm on 30th
September with an all-time low - only 46 attendees! The meeting began on a
miserable note as we did not have access to a projector. CDAC's offices were
closed, like most other offices, and we could not reach anyone to sponsor
the hire charge (Rs.3500). In addition, one of the speakers, Frank Pohlmann
from O'Reilly had taken ill and was  unable to attend.
Our co-ord Biju Chacko [1] then occupied (!) center stage and presented the
status of various processes that the LUG Bangalore was involved in,
including news of the Registration cards and the various  calamitities that
befell this meeting!
The lack of the projector immediately lead to Khader [2] withdrawing from
his presentation which needed visual effects for optimum (!) results. It is
also to be noted here that Khader's presentations are always slow burning
fuses - they need at least 2 LUG meetings to take off! [3]. In all fairness,
they do happen *eventually*. ;-)))
This month's meeting was themed "Multimedia under Linux", showing off the
capabilities of Linux on the Multimedia front. Atul Chitnis [4] kicked off
the theme talks explaining how many people still believe that for anything
under Multimedia, you need to use "That Other OS (tm)", when in fact most
multimedia work is done under Unix and Unix-like OSs (on machines from SGI
or running BeOS). He narrated his own experiences creating music, where
programs such as CakeWalk were very useful under TOOS, but kept crashing
because of the inefficiencies of the underlying OS.
Kalyan Alluri Varma [5] then proceeded to demo VCD's running in Linux. Among
the alternatives discussed were mtv, mtvp and a newer alternative called
xreadvcd+smpegplay [6]. This software while providing effective control of
the movie dumps VCD data to stdout. Using any of the standard MPEG players,
it is possible to then view this stream. The old Unix philosophy resurfaces
again! The relative advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches
was discussed, along with some discussion on the MPEG format itself.
The next presentation was by Madhu M Kurup [7] who demonstrated a streaming
MP3 server using Icecast and shout components[8]. This presentation used the
network that was setup at the LUG meeting to demonstrate a machine receiving
streaming output from a server. On request from the audience, it was
discovered that the solution required such a trivial amount of CPU time and
memory so as to render it of no consequence. Some discussion of the MP3
format, legality of broadcasting music and ripping CD's was also undertaken.
The next section was by Mrinal Kalakrishnan [9] who showed how a PC running
Linux, a AWE64 sound card (Rs1400!) with wavetable support and a inexpensive
Casio MIDI keyboard could be used to create professional music. The main
attraction was the software Jazz++ [10], which was showed off operating in
conjunction with a keyboard synthesizer. Mrinal then stepped through the
process of creating of a song showing multi track recording and editing.
Finally, a track composed by Mrinal and Atul Chitnis especially for the meet
was played to demonstrate that the music tools available on Linux are as
sophisticated as present on any other platform. The composition (entitled
"Linux Can!") is now available for download as a MP3 [16].
The last component was presented by Shankar Balan [11] who put Video under
linux through it's paces. Using an old Sony Handicam as live feed, he was
able to display capture, Web streaming and editing under Linux. Using a tool
called XawTV [12], Broadcast2000 [13] and CamServ [14], he was able to
create and edit a clip of the LUG meeting in real time. The video clip was
also able to capture some vital description of our beloved co-ordinator, who
was not pleased [1]. This demo also included some elements of overlaying a
video with special effects and additional soundtracks. A sample home video
which was created and edited in Linux was a whopping 540MB in raw mode -
underscoring the need for an MPEG4 tool for Linux (or BIIIIIGGG hard
disks!).
Some IT.COM details were also worked out with several groups starting to
take off. Announcements include
- "Education powered by Linux" led by Mahendra
- "Supercomputing powered by Linux" led by Khader
- "Development powered by Linux" by Madhu
- "Multimedia powered by Linux" led by Shanu
- "ISPs powered by Linux" led by Gopi & Avinash
If you want to join any of these groups, get in touch with the respective
team leaders. If you have a project in mind, let the world know. More
details are to be expected on the IT.COM mailing list [15] and all IT.COM
related mails are to be on the IT.COM mailing list. Atul urged people to get
more involved in activities, especially IT.COM. He made it clear that the
success of our stall at this expo would be directly proportional to the
amount of involvement by members of our LUG. He stated that while the expo
is at Bangalore, the Bangalore LUG was to act as the eyes and arms of the
Indian Linux Community. (He was later overheard saying that if he didn't see
some project volunteers soon, he would start volunteering people) Ominiously
enough, we are now exactly one month away from IT.COM. Action, folks....
The meeting ended with dinner which was yummy masala dosas! Faces missing
from the meeting included Jessie, Naim, KD and Prof Guru Bhat! A face *not*
missing was Nikhil Datta who was visiting from ILUG-Calicut. Till the next
meeting .... Linux can[16]!
References [17]:
[1] Numero Uno - alias SG alias BIG man (on camera) - botsie at mail dot com
[2] skhader at in dot ibm dot com
[3] RE: Debian installs in previous meets
[4] achitnis at exocore dot com
[5] kalyan at exocore dot com
[6] http://www.lokigames.com/development/smpeg.php3
[7] madhu at exocore dot com
[8] http://www.icecast.org
[9] mrinal at exocore dot com
[10] http://www.jazzware.com
[11] shanu at exocore dot com
[12] http://www.strusel007.de/linux/xawtv/index.html
[13] http://heroinewarrior.com/bcast2000.html
[14] http://cserv.sourceforge.net/
[15] http://itcom.linux-india.org
[16] The name of the music clip created by Atul and Mrinal - available at
http://www.exocore.com/blug/linuxcan.mp3
[17] The references idea is flicked from Khader's report - thanks....

  Gandalf Mithrandir  /* Mobilis in mobile  */ Final Year CS&E, UVCE, Blr
/*Any Sufficiently Advanced Operating System is indistinguishable from Linux*/ 
//Don't meddle with SysAds for they are quick to anger and subtle in their ways 

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