I installed Wine on an Ubuntu Linux system to be able to run Microsoft Windows applications on it. I installed Sumatra PDF to view PDF and EPUB files. When I double-clicked on EPUB files in the Wine File Explorer window, which you can run by issuing the command wine explorer in a Terminal window, or wine explorer &, if you wish to open it and immediately return to the shell prompt, I saw an Error window which stated "There is no Windows program configured to open this type of file." If I double-clicked on a PDF file, it would open in the GNOME Document Viewer application. I was able to set the default application for opening those files under Wine with the following steps:

1. From the Bash prompt in a Terminal window, run the Wine registry editor program to modify the Windows Registry with wine regedit.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.epub and set (Default) = epubfile. If you don't see a .epub entry, right-click on HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and choose New. You can press the F5 key or choose View and Refresh to refresh the display to show the new entry in alphabetical order.
3. If you then click on the .epub entry, you will see (Default) under Name, REG_SZ under Type, and (value not set) under Data.
4. Double-click on the entry and then type epubfile in the Value data field and then click on OK.
5. Then navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\epubfile\shell\open\command, if it exists. If there is no epubfile entry you can create one by right-clicking on HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and selecting New and Key giving the new key a name of epubfile. Then double-click on the (Default) entry under the new key and type EPUB Document in the Value data field. Then right-click on the epubfile key and choose New and Key and type shell for the name. Right-click on shell and create a new, open beneath it. Then right-click on open and create a new key, command beneath open.
6. Then right click on the command key and choose New then String Value.
7. Double-click on the new (Default) entry under command and then type the location and file name for the application that you wish to use to open .epub files within double quotes followed by a space and then "%1", e.g. "C:\Program Files\SumatraPDF\SumatraPDF.exe" "%1", if you wish to open the files with Sumatra PDF and you installed it so that it is accessible to all users of the system. Or use "C:\users\username\AppData\Local\SumatraPDF\SumatraPDF.exe " "%1", where username is the relevant username, if you chose to install it just for the current user when you installed it.

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/wine] permanent link

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

Collectorz now appears to be focusing on their mobile and web-based products for managing book collections, but they also provide a desktop Book Collector desktop application for systems running Microsoft Windows, though I don't even see a link for it on the homepage of their website nor do I see one in their sitemap webpage. However, if you are using the desktop product and need to update your Book Collector database if the location of cover images, thumbnails, list item images, templates, and/or local files for entries already in the datbase, you can take the steps below. You can specify the directories for new entries by clicking on Tools, Options, Folders to set the directories Book Collector should use by default.

Inside the Book Collector program, click on Tools then select Update File Links. In the Update File Links window you can "choose the kind of files you would like to repair". I left the default value of All Types, but you can also select Front Cover, Back Cover, Pick List Image, Pick List Template Image, Local File, or Backdrop. When you click on Next Step, you can choose to have the program automatically update the old folder to the new folder or you can choose to do it manually. With the automatic option, you can "Select a base folder and let the program find the missing files automatically" while with the manual option you can "Use a find and replace action to manually fix your file paths". For the "Choose folder where to find files", browse to the appropriate directory where the files are now located. Check the box next to "Include subfolders", if that is appropriate, and then click on Next step. The program will then show a "Finding best matches for missing files" window with a progress bar as it updated links.

At the next step, Step 4, you can see the resulting file paths and click on the Update File Links button to finalize the changes. You will then see the number of file links that will be updated and asked if you are sure to proceed. I saw a window with a message that Book Collector was not responding, but I chose "Wait" several times and it finally completed. When all the links are updated, you should see a window informing you of the number of file links updated. If you updated the location for the images for books already in the database, you should now see the images appear for book entries.

If you just need to update the links for a particular kind of files, e.g., the local files, or the location of those files differs from the location of other files, e.g., if they are on a different drive than the images, etc., at Step 1 where you "choose the kind of files you would like to repair", you can choose that file type instead of "All Types".

I was able to use the above steps when transitioning my wife's desktop computer from Windows to Ubuntu Linux, after I installed Book Collector under Wine, to specify the new location of image and local files.

[ More Info ]

[/software/database/collectorz] permanent link

I needed to eject a optical disc drive tray from a command-line interface (CLI) on a system running Microsoft Windows 11 so that I could insert a DVD in the drive. That can be done using the Powershell command powershell (New-Object -ComObject WMPlayer.OCX.7).cdromCollection.item(0).Eject(), which will eject the tray of the first optical drive found by Windows Media Player's COM object.

PS C:\> powershell (New-Object -ComObject WMPlayer.OCX.7).cdromCollection.item(0).Eject()
Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Install the latest PowerShell for new features and improvements! https://aka.ms/PSWindows

PS C:\>

[/os/windows/PowerShell] permanent link

I downloaded a YouTube video on a Ubuntu Linux with yt-dlp. When I tried to view the downloaded WebM file with the default video application, Videos, also known as Totem, which is an application for playing videos that is provided with Ubuntu, I saw the message below:

When I opened the video with VLC, which I had previously installed, I heard audio, but no video was displayed. I checked to see if the Nvidia driver was up-to-date since the system had an Nvidia graphics card, but they were up-to-date. You can check that by clicking on the Show Apps button at the lower-right-hand corner of the screen Ubuntu desktop. Then type Software Updates in the "Type to search" field. Click on Software & Updates and then click on the Additional Drivers.

To resolve the problem, I added the following line to the /etc/environment file with a text editor:

GDK_GL=gles

When I rebooted the system, I was then able to view the video with the default Videos application, though when I tried playing it in VLC I could hear audio, but did not see video.

[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

When I tried to play a YouTube video I downloaded as a WebM file using yt-dlp on an Ubuntu Linux system in the VLC media player application, I could hear the audio, but no video was shown. I tried opening a few other .webm videos and found I was able to view the video in some, but not others, though I was able to view the video and hear the audio in all the .mp4 and .mkv files. I tried changing the video output setting from "Automatic" to "OpenGL video output" and then "XVideo output (XCB)", which you can do by clicking on Tools, then Preferences, then Video, and then selecting those options from the dropdown list next to Output, but neither of those options resolved the problem, so I reset Output to Automatic. I was able to resolve the problem by taking the following steps, though:

1. In the VLC program, click on Tools and then select Preferences.
2. Click on Input/Codecs and change the hardware-accelerated decoding setting by clicking on the downward arrowhead next to Automatic, which will be the setting if the default setting is in effect.
3. Change the setting to Disable and then click on Save.

When I checked the Codec information for the file where I could not view the video before disabling the hardware-accelerated decoding setting, which you can do by opening an audiovisual (AV) file in VLC and then selecting Tools and Codec Information, I saw the video codec was AOMedia's AV1 Video (av01). When I checked the video codec for another WebM file where the video wasn't visible in VLC, I saw it was also the AOMedia's AV1 Video (av01) codec. Checking the video codec for .webm files where I could view the video, I saw Google/ON2's VP9 Video (VP90) for some and H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1) for another.

Note: you can also determine the codecs used in a file using the mediainfo utility, which you can install on an Ubuntu system with sudo apt-get install mediainfo. You can check on whether it is already installed using the command which mediainfo, which would show the location of the mediainfo executable file if the application was installed, or you can use dpkg -s mediainfo, which will show details on the mediainfo package if it is installed.

[/software/audio_video/VLC] permanent link

Another method that can be used for MP4 files, as well as the above file types is the Concat Demuxer method, if the files use the same codecs and parameters, such as resolution, framerate, etc. If the files have the same characteristics, you can use a command of the form:

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i inputFileList.txt -c copy output.mp4

[ More Info ]

[/video/ffmpeg] permanent link

FFmpeg provides a suite of command-line interface tools for working with audio and video files. It is free and open-source software that is available for a variety of operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS. If you wish to use it on a Microsoft Windows system, you can install it with the Windows Package Manager known as winget by opening a command prompt window and issuing the command winget install "FFmpeg (Essentials Build)".

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.26100.7623]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\System32>winget install "FFmpeg (Essentials Build)"
Found FFmpeg (Essentials Build) [Gyan.FFmpeg.Essentials] Version 8.0.1
This application is licensed to you by its owner.
Microsoft is not responsible for, nor does it grant any licenses to, third-party packages.
Downloading https://github.com/GyanD/codexffmpeg/releases/download/8.0.1/ffmpeg-8.0.1-essentials_build.zip
  ██████████████████████████████   101 MB /  101 MB
Successfully verified installer hash
Extracting archive...
Successfully extracted archive
Starting package install...
Command line alias added: "ffmpeg"
Command line alias added: "ffplay"
Command line alias added: "ffprobe"
Path environment variable modified; restart your shell to use the new value.
Successfully installed

C:\Windows\System32>

If you need to trim the beginning of a video file, such as a .mp4 file, you can do so using a command of the form ffmpeg -ss hh:mm:ss -i input.mp4 -c copy output.mp4 where you specify the point you wish the video to start in the form hh:mm:ss for hours, minutes, and seconds with -ss and input.mp4 is the file you wish to trim and output.mp4 is the name you wish to give to the trimmed file. E.g., if I have a video file, REC-0001-A.mp4, where I wish to discard audio and video up to the 3 minutes and 34 seconds mark in the file, I can use ffmpeg -ss 00:03:34 -i REC-0001-A.mp4 -c copy output1.mp4 to create a new file, output1.mp4, that omits the first 3 minutes and 33 seconds from the input file. Using the -c copy option copies the video/audio streams directly, which is fast but can be less accurate on keyframes.

[ More Info ]

[/video/ffmpeg] permanent link

1. Open the program and then click on the gear icon near the top, right side of the window.

   

2. Choose Tools and Options.

   

3. Uncheck the option for "Automatically start the app when I log on to Windows" under the Personal options to prevent the program from restarting automatically upon a login to the system, then click on OK to apply the change after unchecking that option.

   

[/os/windows/software] permanent link

The Firefox web browser does not have the capability to save the contents of a webpage to a single file, such as an MHTML file, which is a web archive file format that allows one to save the HTML code, images etc. on a webpage into a single file. Though the capability is absent from Firefox, you can add the functionality of saving a page to a single file by installing Save Page WE, an add-on for Firefox by DW-dev. The extension provides the capability to "Save a complete web page (as currently displayed) as a single HTML file that can be opened in any browser. Save a single page, multiple selected pages or a list of page URLs. Automate saving from command line." The saved file is not an MHTML file, or one of the other common web archiving file formats, but it is a single HTML file that Firefox and other browsers can read. Save Page WE is implemented using the WebExtensions API and is available for both Firefox and Chrome with identical functions and user interfaces.

When you start the installation process, you will see a list of the permissions required by the extension:

• Access your data for all websites
• Download files and read and modify the browser's download history
• Display notifications to you
• Access browser tabs
• Access browser activity during navigation

Click on the Add button to add the extension. You should then see the message "Save Page WE was added. Update permissions and data preferences any time in the extension settings." You also have the option to pin the extension to the toolbar.

Select the option to pin the extension to the toolbar, which will result in an icon of a 3.5" floppy disk appearing on the toolbar. You can click on that icon to save the page displayed in the current browser tab.

You can also save a page by hitting the Alt+A key combination (you can cancel the saving of a page with At+C). The file format is HTML rather than MHTML, so the file extension used by SavePageWE is .html, which Firefox can open — if you try to open a file with the .mhtml extension, Firefox will prompt you to use another application to open the file.

Anyone who wishes to have the ability to save a webpage as a single file added to Firefox, can add their voice to the post at Add native Web Archive File support to Firefox, including MHTML, MAFF, and Webarchive...

References

1. How to save a webpage as .mhtml with Firefox?
   Last updated: September 15, 2024
   superuser
2. Add native Web Archive File support to Firefox, including MHTML, MAFF, and Webarchive...
   Date: August 15, 2023
   By: JohnBoyTheGreat
   moz://a Connect

[ More Info ]

[/network/web/browser/firefox/addons] permanent link

Microsoft Windows 8 introduced a feature called Fast Startup. The feature was a variation of hibernate mode, but when enabled would close all running programs and log the user out before hibernating. This feature would result in a user being able to log in more quickly when a system is powered back on after a shutdown. There may be cases where use of this feature is not desirable, however. E.g., if the user wants to boot the system into Linux, but still access data on the Windows boot drive. To turn fast startup off, you can take the following steps:

1. Type Control Panel in the Windows Search field at the bottom of the screen.
2. Click on System and Security.
3. Click on Change what the power buttons do under Power Options.
4. Click on Change settings that are currently unavailable. If prompted for administrator credentials, provide those for an administrator account.
5. Uncheck the check box next to "Turn on fast startup (recommended)".
6. Click on Save changes. You can then close the window.

[ More Info ]

[/os/windows] permanent link

Then from the Behavior tab, I changed the setting from Follow System to Always, which resulted in the scrollbar appearing where it had been missing, but I could not scroll back any further than the text that had been appearing in the tab before I changed the settiing and that remained the same whenever I issued another command and text moved upwards, so that I could no longer see it or scroll back to see it, so I closed the tab.

When I opened another tab, the scrollbar was there and operated as expected.

[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link