Ubuntu: Sound-juicer enable missing MP3 codec profile

Sound-juicer on Ubuntu 10.04 does not have lame for gstreamer included as standard hence the MP3 profile is not available out of the box. The required gstreamer lame mp3 plug in does not exist as a dependency for sound-juicer or in the standard synaptic repository. To enable the MP3 profile in sound-juicer, the underlying gstreamer lame mp3 plug is required. To install the gstreamer lame mp3 plug in from the default synaptic repository use:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse

Ubuntu: Automatically rip CD to FLAC and convert to ALAC m4a for iTunes & HomeSharing

Since getting iTunes running smoothly on my Ubuntu server under VirtualBox I was looking to upgrade and automate my CD ripping process. My aim here was to have a near 'zero click' approach for ripping an inserted CD to FLAC for opensource goodness and then to convert the files to ALAC for iTunes compatibility and HomeSharing. The two click solution I've reached involves 1) to select the right CD metadata from an CD info site and 2) to hit the button to rip, the script does the rest. It now takes me under 15 minutes to rip a CD to FLAC and get it into iTunes and shared over HomeSharing with just two clicks, here's how...


N.B. As of October 2011 ALAC is now open source too.