How to turn an .avi file into a movie DVD?

[daihard]

Hi.

I would like to burn an .avi movie file (about 500 MB in size) onto a DVD in a way that lets you watch it using a standard DVD player. I'm sure there's software out there that does it; I just need to know what it is so I can fiddle with it. Any advice?

TIA,
Dai

[lazlow]

Avidemux2 is about the best at converting avi to mpg. There is an auto DVD function.

I like qdvdauthor for turning mpg into DVDs with menus and such.

[daihard]

Avidemux2 is about the best at converting avi to mpg. There is an auto DVD function.

I like qdvdauthor for turning mpg into DVDs with menus and such.
Thanks! Now, do I need to convert avi to mpg first in order to make a movie DVD out of it, or will avidemux2 take care of that process automatically? In any case, I will give it a shot. :)

[lazlow]

Avidemux2 does video conversions and minor editing. It will do the conversion.

You feed the mpgs to qdvdauthor to make the menus and stuff for the dvd.

[daihard]

Avidemux2 does video conversions and minor editing. It will do the conversion.

You feed the mpgs to qdvdauthor to make the menus and stuff for the dvd.
I have managed to install avidemux2 and dvdauthor. Now I am running avidemux2 to convert my AVI file to an MPG2 file using the "Auto->DVD" menu. I suppose I will then be able to pass the resulting MPG2 file to dvdauthor to create a DVD-compatible directory structure?

[lazlow]

I use qdvdauthor. It is a lot like k3b in that it is a graphical front end for a number of other tools.

One thing about avidemux2 that I forgot to mention. If you want a pal DVD you need a framerate of 25fps. The auto->dvd function will then produce a final size of 720X576. If you want a NTSC DVD you need a framerate of 23.976 or 29fps (whichever is closer to your source). The auto->dvd function will then produce a final size of 720X480. Most NTSC players will not play pal format. I have heard that most Pal players will play NTSC format.

[InKo]

hi daihard,

if you need to convert an avi to mpg/vob without changing the resolution (e.g. pal -> pal, or ntsc -> ntsc) then you can also use ffmpeg (it is faster!). ;) Here is a sample code for pal:

ffmpeg -i movie.avi -target pal-dvd -r 25 -ar 44100 -aspect 4:3 -acodec copy -sameq movie.vob


after that, you can use dvdauthor for creating a dvd, e.g.:

mkdir mymovie
dvdauthor -o mymovie -t movie.vob
dvdauthor -o mymovie -T
mkisofs -dvd-video -o movie.iso mymovie/
growisofs --dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=movie.iso
eject
rm -rf mymovie/


I had no problems that way, so far! :D

p.s. I suited this code into a nice script (e.g. avi2dvd ) and it is doing for me the job autmatically! :p

[daihard]

Thanks, lazlow and InKo!

I have been able to create a DVD from my original avi file via avidemux2 and dvdauthor. InKo, your sample code has been very helpful, especially since I had no idea that I needed to run dvdauthor with "-T" to create a necessary .IFO file for "mkisfs -dvd-video" to convert the files into a video-compatible ISO image. :)

Now my last question for now... What if I would like to include multiple mpg files in one DVD? I'd imagine I can simply list them with dvdauthor, but I'm wondering what the best way would be to create menu buttons for each of the files? Will the use of "-m" take care of it?

[InKo]

you must then use a DVD Authoring tool...
For linux I know only qdvdauthor, mandvd and dvdauthorwizard.
I once used the dvdauthorwizard on FreeBSD and found it as the best one! :)

[ALiAs]

http://www.rastersoft.com/programas/devede.html
Front end for all the goodness and nice and easy to use.

[InKo]

http://www.rastersoft.com/programas/devede.html
Front end for all the goodness and nice and easy to use.

Thanx ALiAs,

very nice tool! :) Installation - without any problems! ;)

[stunter]

I've been reading this thread with interest. I have an .mkv file that I'm trying to set up on a dvd to play in a normal dvd player. I tried the scripts posted above for ffmpeg and the process worked fine and the resulting dvd also seems to work fine. One problem, no sound. I watched the process in the terminal window and it appeared that ffmpeg had several problems processing the audio.

Is there anything I can do to try to fix this? I'm a complete neophyte at this and am trying to learn.

Thanks for any input.

[Jongi]

yep I recently used devede and it is the bees knees

[stunter]

Yea, I tried DeVeDe and it seemed to work fine. But my DVD player couldn't read it. Worked fine on the computer and played with VLC, Xine and Mplayer, though my son's computer (windows XP based) couldn't read it - gotta love Windows Media player with zero codecs.

[Jongi]

stunter - i burnt a dvd for someone and apparently it didn't work on their dvd while it did on my computer. strange.

[FriedChips]

indeed devede is a great app, if you have livna enabled just:
yum install devede

[stunter]

Yea, I tired DeVeDe, DVDStyler, and a couple of other things. The closest was using the command line script (ffmpeg) above. This resulted in a DVD that would play on at least one DVD player in the house (a new Toshiba). Still won't play on the one I wanted it for, but I'm trying other variables.

[Gravityzero]

this may be a little off topic but not really...
i have 2 .AVI files each at about 800-900 mb, both about 2hours in duration.. my question is , is it possible to put both of those on a single DVD-R ?

[YeOK]

You can join them together using mencoder from the command line.

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -o "joined.avi" "1.avi" "2.avi"

You could also add both the files to DeVeDe. It will make a menu for each file added.


Then in DeVeDe, you can lower the quality till they fit. You should know though, devede only makes a guess at the end size of the DVD, I find its usually a long way out on Xvids (They always seem half the size.) I suppose it all depends on the quality of the Xvids your encoding from.

I use DeVeDe all the time. I've never had a DVD fail to play. (Not that I have tried that many mind.)