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Welcome to the Skunkware Audio/Video Tools section. Here you will find sound card drivers, MPEG players and encoders, midi players, audio CD players and mixers, and other tools used for developing and enjoying multimedia presentations.

Package List

mpg123 - MPEG audio player

mpg123 reads one or more files (or standard input if - is specified) or URLs and plays them on the audio device (default) or outputs them to stdout. File/URL is assumed to be an MPEG-1/2 audio bit stream.

In addition to reading MPEG audio streams from ordinary files and from the standard input, mpg123 supports retrieval of MPEG audio files via the HTTP protocol, which is used in the World Wide Web (WWW). Such files are specified using a so-called URL (universal resource location), which starts with http://. When a file with that prefix is encountered. mpg123 attempts to open an HTTP connection to the server in order to retrieve that file to decode and play it. It is often useful to retrieve files through a WWW cache or so-called proxy. To accomplish this, mpg123 examines the environment for variables named MP3_HTTP_PROXY, http_proxy and HTTP_PROXY, in this order. The value of the first one that is set will be used as proxy specification. To override this, you can use the -p command line option (see the OPTIONS section). Specifying -p none will enforce contacting the server directly without using any proxy, even if one of the above environment variables is set. Note that, in order to play MPEG audio files from a WWW server, it is necessary that the connection to that server is fast enough. For example, a 128 kbit/s MPEG file requires the network connection to be at least 128 kbit/s (16 kbyte/s) plus protocol overhead. If you suffer from short network outages, you should try the -b option (buffer) to bypass such outages. If your network connection is generally not fast enough to retrieve MPEG audio files in realtime, you can first download the files to your local harddisk (e.g. using lynx(1)) and then play them from there.

MPEG audio decoding requires a good deal of CPU performance, especially layer-3. To decode it in realtime, you should have at least a Pentium, Alpha, SuperSparc or equivalent processor. You can also use the -singlemix option to decode mono only, which reduces the CPU load somewhat for layer-3 streams. See also the -2 and -4 options. If everything else fails, use the -s option to decode to standard output, direct it into a file and then use an appropriate utility to play that file. You might have to use a tool such as sox(1) to convert the output to an audio format suitable for your audio player. Also note that mpg123 always generates 16 bit stereo data (if one of the -single* options is used, two identical stereo channels are generated). If your hardware requires some other format, for example 8 bit mono, you also have to use a converter such as sox(1). If your system is generally fast enough to decode in realtime, but there are sometimes periods of heavy system load (such as cronjobs, users logging in remotely, starting of big programs etc.) causing the audio output to be interrupted, then you should use the -b option to use a buffer of at least 1000 Kbytes.

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/mpg123/

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/osr5/audio/mpg123/

http://mpg.123.org/

maplay - MPEG audio player

maplay version 1.2 is the second release of my MPEG audio player/decoder. It decodes layer I and layer II MPEG audio streams and plays them using a CD-quality audio device. Currently supported devices are the dbri device of SPARC 10 computers and the audio ports of Silicon Graphics Indigo machines. Thanks to Louis P. Kruger (lpkruger@phoenix. Princeton.EDU), maplay 1.2 can also use the /dev/dsp device under Linux. Louis has tested it with the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 soundcard. Sound Blaster 16 and Gravis Ultrasound cards should also work, but a bug in the dsp driver prevents stereo playback on Gravis Ultrasound cards. An amd device of a SPARC 2/IPX/... machine can be used, too, but this device is only capable of producing audio output at 8 kHz in u-law format, which sounds like transmitted through a telephone. Other audio device are not supported directly, but can be used with the "decode to stdout" option and an audio format converter. Besides it should not be a problem to adapt the program to other audio devices.

The player supports all modes, which are single channel, stereo, joint stereo and dual channel, and all bitrates except free mode. The missing free mode support should not be a problem for now, because I have not seen such a stream yet.

maplay needs approximately 46% CPU time on SPARC 10/40 machines and 50% on Indigos for realtime stereo playback of a 44.1 kHz 128 kbit/s stream. Single channel playback needs about the half CPU time. On a SPARCstation IPX, maplay needs about 43% CPU time for realtime mono playback. Stereo playback is not possible via an amd device.

Besides realtime playing of audio streams, maplay can decode streams to stdout for further conversions. The output consists of 16 bit signed PCM values. For stereo streams, the values are interleaved, which means that a value for the left channel is followed by a value for the right channel and so on. If maplay has been compiled for u-law output, the output consists of 8 bit u-law samples at a rate of 8 kHz, no matter what frequency the stream uses.

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/osr5/audio/maplay/

ftp://ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/multimedia/maplay1.2

The Festival Speech Synthesis System

Festival offers a general framework for building speech synthesis systems as well as including examples of various modules. As a whole it offers full text to speech through a number APIs: from shell level, though a Scheme command interpreter, as a C++ library, and an Emacs interface. Festival is multi-lingual (currently English, Welsh and Spanish) though English is the most advanced.

The system is written in C++ and uses the Edinburgh Speech Tools for low level architecture and has a Scheme (SIOD) based command interpreter for control. Documentation is given in the FSF texinfo format which can generate, a printed manual, info files and HTML.

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/festival/

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/osr5/audio/festival/

ftp://ftp.cstr.ed.ac.uk/pub/festival/

http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival.html

The MBROLA Speech Synthesis System

MBROLA v3.00 is a speech synthesizer based on the concatenation of diphones. It takes a list of phonemes as input, together with prosodic information (duration of phonemes and a piecewise linear description of pitch), and produces speech samples on 16 bits (linear), at the sampling frequency of the diphone database.

It is therefore NOT a Text-To-Speech (TTS) synthesizer, since it does not accept raw text as input. In order to obtain a full TTS system, you need to use this synthesizer in combination with a text processing system that produces phonetic and prosodic commands. The Skunkware MBROLA distribution is pre-configured for use in conjunction with the Festival Speech Synthesis system as well as the txt2pho and emofilt utilities. These tools provide support for TTS synthesis, Text-to-Phoneme conversion, and manipulation of prosody of text-to-speech output.

There is currently only an SCO OpenServer 5 binary which works on both OpenServer and UnixWare 7.

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/mbrola/

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/mbrola/

http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/mbrcopy.html

http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/mbrola.html

The Edinburgh Speech Tools Library

The Edinburgh Speech Tools Library is a collection of C++ class, functions and related programs for manipulating the sorts of objects used in speech processing. It includes support for reading and writing waveforms, parameter files (LPC, Ceptra, F0) in various formats and converting between them. It also includes support for linguistic type objects and support for various label files and ngrams (with smoothing).

In addition to the library a number of programs are included. An intonation library which includes a pitch tracker, smoother and labelling system (using the Tilt Labelling system), a classification and regression tree (CART) building program called wagon. Also there is growing support for various speech recognition classes such as decoders and HMMs.

The Edinburgh Speech Tools Library is not an end in itself but desgined to make the construction of other speech systems easy. It is for example to provided the underlying classes in the Festival Speech Synthesis System

The speech tools are currently distributed in full source form free for unrestricted use.

The following c++ programs are available:

• na_play: generic playback program for use with net_audio and CSTR ao.
• ch_wave: Waveform file conversion program.
• ch_lab: label file conversion program.
• ch_track: Track file conversion program.
• wagon: a CART tree build and test program
• And others

The following C++ sub-libraries are available

• audio: C++ audio functions for Network Audio system, Suns OpenServer, UnixWare, Linux and FreeBSD
• speech_class: C++ speech classes, including waveform and track.
• ling_class: C++ linguistic classes.
• sigpr: Signal processing
• utils: Various utilities.

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/speech_tools/

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/osr5/audio/speech_tools/

ftp://ftp.cstr.ed.ac.uk/pub/festival/

http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/speech_tools.html

TTS front end for the MBROLA synthesizer

Txt2pho is a German TTS front end for the MBROLA synthesizer. This program is derived from the speech synthesis system Hadifix.

Currently there are no UnixWare or OpenServer binaries available but the freely available Linux binary works when used in conjunction with the Linux Emulation System developed by SCO, lxrun.

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/txt2pho/

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/txt2pho/

http://www.ikp.uni-bonn.de/~tpo/HADIFIXforMBROLA.html

Open Sound System sound card drivers

Open Sound System for SCO OpenServer and SCO UnixWare provides device drivers for popular soundcards under SCO Open Server 5, SCO UnixWare 2.x, UnixWare 7 and Free/SCO. OSS/SCO comes with a configuration tool and complies with the Open Sound System API.

Features include :

• Easy menu based installation and configuration program
• Support for Sound Blaster AWE32/AWE64 Emu8000 synth
• Supports PnP sound cards.
• Autodetection of Sound Blaster, ESS and GUS sound cards.
• Drivers for over 150 brand name soundcards and onboard audio devices.
• Support for a wide variety of audio applications
• Support for select()
• Support for "Virtual Mixer" - play 8 simultaneous audio apps!
• Support for OPL3-SAx, AD1816, CMI8330 and Sound Blaster AWE64 PCI
• Support for S3 Sonic Vibes/Turtle Beach Daytona
• Full Duplex support for Sound Blaster 16/AWE-32/AWE-64 and Vibra16
• Support for Ensoniq AudioPCI and AudioPCI97

OSS/SCO version 980728 now available (August 14, 1998) for OpenServer and OSS/UnixWare version 3.9 BETA announced (April 17, 1998) for UnixWare. SCO Skunkware was the initial SCO distribution mechanism for these drivers. The OSS audio drivers are being incorporated into the standard product line (beginning with UnixWare 7 and soon with OpenServer). As this transition takes place, the Skunkware audio pages will attempt to direct you to the best place to download the current driver for your platform(s). Currently, the best place to get the OSS audio driver(s) is from 4Front Technologies as they provide the latest bug-fixed release sooner than SCO is able to integrate it into their product line. Unfortunately, the 4Front drivers are not free. SCO will continue to provide free fully-functional SoundBlaster compatible OSS drivers on-line and in the product. Whew.

The download page at 4Front Technologies is http://www.4front-tech.com/download.cgi. The 4Front Technologies OpenServer page is at http://www.4front-tech.com/sco.html and the 4Front UnixWare page is http://www.4front-tech.com/unixware.html.

In addition, 4Front maintains a pretty good set of links to free audio software at http://www.4front-tech.com/ossapps.html.

The links below will attempt to take you to the latest (free, fully functional) SCO pre-licensed drivers. Hopefully these locations will stabilize over time.

osr5/audio/oss

ftp://ftp.sco.com/SLS/ptf7103

http://www.4front-tech.com/

Snd - sound editor

Snd is a freeware sound editor modelled loosely after Emacs and an old, sorely-missed PDP-10 sound editor named Dpysnd. It is an X/Motif application written by Bill Schottstaedt (bil@ccrma.stanford.edu).

It can accomodate any number of sounds at once, each with any number of channels. Each channel is normally displayed in its own window, with its own cursor, edit history, and marks; each sound has a control panel to try out various changes quickly, and an expression parser, used mainly during searches; there is an overall stack of regions that can be browsed and edited; channels and sounds can be grouped together during editing; edits can be undone and redone without restriction (unlimited undo)

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/snd/

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/osr5/audio/snd/

http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Software/snd/snd.html

Sound eXchange

SoX is a sound file format converter for Unix and DOS PCs written by Lance Norskog and other invaluable contributors. It also does sample rate conversion and some sound effects. It is the swiss army knife of sound tools: the interface is not great, but it does almost everything.

SoX uses file suffices to determine the nature of a sound sample file. If it finds the suffix in its list, it uses the appropriate read or write handler to deal with that file. SoX has an auto-detect feature that attempts to figure out the nature of an unmarked sound sample.

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/osr5/audio/sox/

http://www.spies.com/Sox/Archive/

http://www.spies.com/Sox/

TiMidity - MIDI to WAVE converter and player

TiMidity is a MIDI to WAVE converter using Gravis Ultrasound-compatible patch files to generate digital audio data from General MIDI files. The data can be stored in a file for processing, or played in real time through an audio device.

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/osr5/audio/timidity/

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/

http://www.cgs.fi/~tt/timidity/distribution.html

http://www.cgs.fi/~tt/timidity/

Motif CD Audio Player

Xmcd is CD Player utility package including xmcd, a CD Player for the X window system using the Motif graphical user interface and cda, a command-line driven, text mode CD Player which also features a curses-based, screen-oriented mode. Both utilities transform your CD-ROM or CD-R drive into a stereo CD player, allowing you to play music CDs on your computer.

These CD player utilities are designed to be attractive, feature-rich yet intuitive to use, and takes advantage of many CD-ROM drive capabilities that are not accessible via other players. Moreover, a CD database feature is supported, maintaining the disc artist/title, track titles, and arbitrary text (such as band information and song lyrics).

Xmcd and cda have emerged as the most ported CD player package, supporting a substantial list of UNIX operating system variants (as well as a non-UNIX OS) and hardware platforms. Moreover, these utilities also support a vast spectrum of CD-ROM and CD-R drives, including many older SCSI-1 units.

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/osr5/audio/xmcd

ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/tk/tkan/xmcd-2.1/src

http://sunsite.unc.edu/~cddb/xmcd/welcome.html

Motif Audio Mixer

Xmmix is an audio mixer utility for the X window system using the Motif graphical user interface. It operates the input and output mixer section on many PC sound cards.

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/osr5/audio/xmmix/

ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/applications/xmmix/

http://sunsite.unc.edu/~cddb/xmmix/

Vtcl mixer front-end

Xmixer is a Visual TCL (vtcl) script written by John Gray (johng@sco.com) which acts as a graphical front-end to the mixer program thus providing an easy-to-use and simple way to control the mixing of your sound card.

/usr/local/bin/Xmixer  [ linear ] [ gang ] [ notitle ] [ help ]
   linear  slider control, default is log
   gang    slider control, default is separate
   notitle No L/R labels on sliders, default is labels
   help    This message,   default is no message

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/osr5/audio/

ftp://ftp.sco.com/skunkware/src/audio/

audio editor, player, recorder

Xwave supports editing of large files, cut,copy,paste,merge, some effects (echo,reverse,swap channels,resample,volume), supports RIFF,AIFF,AIFC,AU SCO, Linux,SGI,SUN,FreeBSD

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/uw7/audio/

ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/editors/

http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/editors/

encodes MPEG-1 bitstreams

mpeg_encode produces an MPEG-1 video stream. param_file is a parameter file which includes a list of input files and other parameters.

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/osr5/video/mpeg_encode/

ftp://mm-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/multimedia/mpeg

play mpeg-1 encoded bitstreams

mpeg_play decodes and displays mpeg-1 encoded bitstreams on systems running X11. The player will create a new window, display the bitstream, and exit.

osr5/video/mpeg_play/mpeg_play-2.3.tar.gz

ftp://ftp2.sco.com/pub/skunkware/audio

ftp://mm-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/multimedia/mpeg

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Last Updated: Friday Jul 06, 2001 at 15:00:20 PDT