User Guide - Media

This chapter covers how to use media such as hard drives, DVDs, CDs, and flash drives in Fedora.

Understanding

When you insert or connect a medium - such as a CD, DVD, hard drive, or flash drive - to your computer, Fedora automatically recognizes and makes it available for use; an icon is placed both on your desktop and in the Places menu in GNOME.

Mounting Media as Volumes
When Fedora detects that a new medium has been inserted or connected, it mounts it as a volume. The hard drive that Fedora is installed on is mounted by default during start-up and cannot be ejected, or unmounted, like other volumes.

When you are finished using your media, you must unmount the medium before removing it from the computer. To do this, right-click on the device's icon and then select Unmount Volume or Eject, depending on what type of media you are using; during this process any remaining changes to the data on the media is written to the device, allowing safe removal without data loss. Removing the medium without unmounting it first could cause data to be corrupted; if this is the case, you will not be able to get your data back in the future.

There are several multi-media applications available for GNOME and KDE desktops. These applications will run in any Fedora desktop environment. To install software packages not already installed, please read the chapter on managing software. You can install applications by either using the PackageKit application or on the command line by using Yum.

Exploring Media

GNOME Media Applications

All of these programs are opened by Selecting Applications > Sound and Video > Your Application, with the exception of CD/DVD Creator which opened by going to Places > CD/DVD Creator.

The programs installed on the GNOME desktop by default are:

CD/DVD Creator, is a CD and DVD burner.

To create a data disc:

• Open CD/DVD Creator and drag the files and folders that you want to write to CD or DVD to the CD/DVD Creator folder.
• Insert a writeable CD or DVD into your writer device. Doing this step first usually opens the CD/DVD Creator automatically. You can configure the CD/DVD Creator to open automatically by going to System > Preferences > Hardware > Multimedia Systems Selector > and on the Audio and Video tabs select Autodetect on the drop-down menu.
• Click the [Write to Disc] button, or choose File > Write to CD/DVD.

• Here you can choose write to your CD/DVD or to a File Image. An image file (ISO) is a normal file that will saved to your hardrive. It contains all of the data in the same format as a CD, that you can write to a CD later.

• To write a disc image to a CD/DVD, right-click on the disc image file, then choose Write to Disc from the popup menu.

• You can type a name for your CD/DVD in the Disc name window and select a Write speed from the drop-down under Write Options. You will also see the size of your data that will be written to the disc.

• Press the '[Write] button to copy your data to the CD/DVD.

To make a copy of a CD or DVD:

• Insert the disc you want to copy.
• Choose Places ▸ Computer from the top panel menu bar.
• Right-click on the CD icon, and choose Copy Disc.
• Follow the Write to Disc dialogue as above.

If you have only one write drive the program will first create a file on your computer. The original disk will be ejected, and ask you to change it for a blank disk to write the copy on.

The Help manual can be accessed by pressing the [F1] key or clicking Help > Contents on the top menu bar.

Cheese Webcam Booth takes photos and videos with your webcam. From the top menu:

• Selecting Cheese you can choose to turn on the Countdown timer, Take a photo or Record, depending on if you selected Photo or Video button, see the Fullscreen, and Quit the application.
• Edit lets you turn on Effects, Move to Trash, Move All to Trash, and change the Preferences.
• Clicking on Help or pressing [F1] opens the Cheese Manual.

The tabs are shortcuts of the choices in top menu.

More information is available on the Cheese Website

Rhythm Box plays CDs and is a music collection manager.

Sound Juicer, the CD ripping tool.

Sound Recorder are installed on both GNOME and KDE desktops by default.

Totem movie player that plays DVDs, CDs, and VCDs.

KDE Media Applications

The applications installed on the KDE desktop at installation are:

Amarok which is a CD player and collection manager.

Cheese Webcam Booth takes photos and videos with your webcam.

Dragon Player is a video player.

Juk is a music player.

Kaffeine plays DVDs.

KMix, as sound mixer.

KsCD is a simple CD player.

Rhythm Box plays CDs and is a music collection manager.

Sound Juicer, the CD ripping tool.

Sound Recorder are installed on both GNOME and KDE desktops by default.

Totem movie player that plays DVDs, CDs, and VCDs.

Media Programs in the Repository

Here are two applications that are not installed by default but are in the Repository.

Brasero, a CD/DVD player and burner.

GNOMEBaker another CD/DVD player and burner.

: K3B is a KDE CD burner and DVD creator.

To install these packages please, read the chapter on managing software. You can install applications by either using the PackageKit application or on the command line by using Yum.

Kb3: When you are ready to burn the files or folders to disk click the Burn button.

Adding Files
To add files to your K3b project, drag the files into the project pane at the bottom of the screen. Everything in this project pane will be burned to your optical medium.

When you are ready to burn the files or folders to disk click the Burn button.

To burn an ISO image file such as the Fedora 8 DVD installation image, use the Tools > Burn DVD ISO Image. Navigate to and select the .iso image, then click the Start button. To burn an ISO image file such as the Fedora 8 DVD installation image, use the Tools > Burn DVD ISO Image. Navigate to and select the .iso image, then click the Start button.

GNOMEBaker: * To burn a specific file to a CD click the Data CD action button, and then drag and drop the file from the top pane into the right hand side of the bottom pane. Entire folders can also be dragged and dropped. Click the burn button to burn the files or folders to the disc.

• Burning an ISO image file such as the Fedora 9 DVD installation image is done through the Tools > Burn DVD Image menu. If the .iso file is for a CD, choose Burn CD Image. Navigate to the image, select it, and click the OK button. Click the Start button in the next window to confirm burning your disc image.

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