Easy DVD (with no menus) authoring using linux
Let’s say we have some videos we recorded on our last road trip or that we just downloaded a movie and want to watch those videos or that movie on our standalone dvd player, how on earth could we do that?! Answer: Using linux and following this simple howto. Here we’ll learn how to author a DVD with no menus from AVI video source using linux command line.
Sounds pretty hard right? Well… it is not. Let’s get this thing up, but before we start lets see what are the tools we are going to need:
To make the reading easier i’ll use a file named movieclip.avi and will be keeping it and all the files created during the process in the same directory.
Encoding the movies
For NTSC:
transcode -i movieclip.avi -y ffmpeg --export_prof dvd-ntsc --export_asr 3 -o movieclip -D0 -b224 -N 0x2000 -m movieclip.ac3 -J modfps=clonetype=3 --export_fps 29.97
For PAL:
transcode -i movieclip.avi -y ffmpeg --export_prof dvd-pal --export_asr 3 -o movieclip -D0 -b224 -N 0x2000 -m movieclip.ac3 -J modfps=clonetype=3 --export_fps 25
This will produce 2 files, movieclip.m2v wich has been re-encoded into a DVD compliant mpeg2 format and movieclip.ac3 wich has been encoded into an AC3 DVD audio stream.
Aspect ratio
The above lines will encode the video to an aspect ratio of 16:9. If an aspect ratio of 4:3 is desired then we need to replace ‘export_asr 3’ with ‘export_asr 2’.
Combine the new audio and video files
We need to combine the new audio and video files into a DVD mpg.
mplex -f 8 -o movieclip_dvd.mpg movieclip.m2v movieclip.ac3
Now we have a DVD mpg file, test it using mplayer or xine if you like.
Authoring the DVD
Now the tricky part comes. To author the DVD we’ll use dvdauthor, wich needs a xml file to work. To author a DVD with no menus create a file named dvdauthor.xml (in the same working directory) and use the config shown below:
<dvdauthor dest="DVD">
<vmgm />
<titleset>
<titles>
<video format="ntsc" aspect="16:9" />
<pgc>
<vob file="movieclip_dvd.mpg" />
</pgc>
</titles>
</titleset>
</dvdauthor>
If your video format is PAL replace “ntsc” with “pal”. If your aspect ratio is 4:3 then replace “16:9” with “4:3”.
Run dvdauthor to create the DVD:
dvdauthor -x dvdauthor.xml
This will create a directory named ‘DVD’ with the structure of a video DVD. Test the new DVD in xine:
xine dvd:/full/path/to/DVD/
xine should play from the folder as if it’s playing from a DVD.
Create the DVD image and burn it
To burn the video DVD we can just burn the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS directories (in the DVD directory) to a DVD or we could create an image and then burn it. To create the DVD image use growisofs and to burn the DVD image use whatever you normally use for that.
growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -dvd-video DVD/
Hopefully all turned out right and you have your DVD ready and working.
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