Setting up Elisa Media Center

First add the Elisa to your software sources.

There's a page with the different sources here: https://code.fluendo.com/elisa/trac/wiki/Packages

Go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources and click on the Third Party Software tab. Click Add and enter (for Gutsy):

deb http://elisa.fluendo.com/packages gutsy main

Then you need to add the key... open a terminal and enter:

wget http://elisa.fluendo.com/packages/philn.asc -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Next do an update:

sudo apt-get update

Now you're ready to install elisa. In the terminal type:

sudo apt-get install elisa-extra
or
sudo apt-get install elisa

I recommend getting elisa-extra as it has some extra plugins etc... After it's done installing, it will be ready to run by going to Applications -> Sound & Video -> Elisa Media Center, or just typing Elisa in the terminal.

By default, Elisa uses the audio / video / image folders in your home directory as your media library. If you're like me and want to use a different location, like the RAID array you just setup, you can modify the elisa.conf file to add additional locations. The elisa.conf file is located in /.elisa/ directory in your home directory. Before editing this, you should close elisa (hit escape).

To edit elisa.conf:

sudo vi ~/.elisa/elisa.conf

I configured elisa.conf to include additional media locations. There's a simple explanation on the elisa wiki site at: https://code.fluendo.com/elisa/trac/wiki/FirstRun

My modifications look like this. I modified the locations_builder section as follows:

[xmlmenu:locations_builder]
locations = ['file:///mnt/raid/movies','file:///mnt/raid/audio', 'file:///mnt/raid/images']
auto_locations = 0

[[file:///mnt/raid/movies]]
label = 'Movies'
only_media = ['video']
location_type = 'local'

[[file:///mnt/raid/audio]]
label = 'Music'
only_media = ['audio']
location_type = 'local'

[[file:///mnt/raid/images]]
label = 'Pictures'
only_media = ['image']
location_type = 'local'

The locations line is where you add the folders you'd like to include in your media library. I also set auto_locations to 0 so it doesn't try to search for additional media. The next three sections, which are named after each of the locations I added, provide some additional detail for each location. The label is simply the name that will be displayed for that folder in Elisa. You can restrict in which section that folder will appear in the field 'only_media'. My movies directory, for example, will only show up under Videos in Elisa. The location_type should be set to local unless you are attempting to access a networked location.

At this point, you should be able to run Elisa, go into the different categories (Music, Video, Images) and see your folders.


Continued: Setting up the Remote Control (LIRC)