How to create DVD from home movies

[taylor65]

I'm hoping to find time to put in more details on this, but it took me a while to find all this info, so I thought others might like it as well. Everything I put in here was learned from someone else on the web, but I didn't save web page URLs.

Start with a miniDV camcorder with a firewire (ieee1394) connection. Install a firewire card in you machine. I have FC1, and it's distribution supports firewire, but I had to run the following as root before running the capture program, kino:
modprobe raw1394
modprobe ohci1394
modprobe video1394
Then run kino (doesn't come with the dist.). Kino will grab the video as raw dv. Then edit it with kino if you want. Then export the video clip to mpeg2 (the menu option for this says it's for DVDs). This part is real slow on my 1.2G machine with 256MB of memory. Now you have a .mpeg that's compatible with a standard DVD player. Export however many video clips you want to put on the DVD. When done, I use dvdstyler (not on the dist.) to create the DVD menu and put the .mpegs in order. The default for dvdstyler is PAL, so if you want NTSC, use File -> New -> NTSC. Drag and drop the .mpegs to the bottom pane, choose a picture for a background, and add menu buttons. Beware that it crashes if you have a button highlighted and you move your mouse to it. If you want the first .mpeg to automatically move to the second .mpeg and so forth, right-click on the first .mpeg and change the title post commands to say "jump title 2;", then change the 2nd .mpeg post commands to say "jump title 3;", etc. Then click on generate, and dvdstyler will generate the file structure in a subdirectory. Then, create the ISO from that. I have a DVD-R, so I use the command:
mkisofs -dvd-video -udf -r -o $1.iso $1
where $1 is the subdirectory name. If you have a DVD+R, the command is different (growisofs, I think, and if I remember correctly, that command creates the iso and burns the DVD in one step). K3B will do this part for you if you use DVD+R, I couldn't get it to use DVD-Rs. Then burn the DVD with the command:
dvdrecord -v -dao -speed=4 -dev=1,0,0 -driveropts=burnproof $1
where $1 is the name of iso you just created. The parameter "-dev=1,0,0" refers to the position of your DVD burner - I have a CD-ROM in the first slot (0,0,0), and the DVD burner in the second slot (1,0,0). I tried this with some cheap blank DVDs, and they worked, but there were lots of skips when playing it back and some DVD players couldn't play the disc at all. I then bought some name brand blank DVDs, and they don't skip at all and everything plays the DVDs, including my playstation 2.

Just in case anyone is interested in the hardware particulars, I have an HP Pavilion with a 1.2GHz cpu, 40GB drive, 256MB memory, Startech firewire card, Toshiba 4X DVD-R burner, using Fujifilm blank DVDs. Capturing video is in real-time, converting to mpeg2 takes about 12 minutes to do 1 minute of video, burning takes about 40 minutes for a 4.4GB disk. Disk space required is huge - a 20 minute raw clip takes about 6GB, then another 1.5GB for the mpeg2 format, then you need room for the disk equal to all the mpegs you're putting on the disk, then an equal amout of room for the iso. I typically have to erase the raw video files as soon as I've converted to mpeg2.

I hope this helps.
Tim

[ghenry]

Very nice. If you want we can make this a howto, if you word it in that way etc.? i.e. using code tags etc.

[taylor65]

Update to this how-to for FC2:

1 - use the new dvdstyler at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/d...ar.gz?download

1a - Must have wxWidgets first - see item #4

2 - the new dvdstyler will create the iso for you, so no need to do that by hand.

3 - K3b now supports the DVD-R format, so I use Tools -> DVD -> Burn DVD ISO Image option, so no need to do that by hand anymore either.

4 - You must have the new wxWidgets and mjpegtoos and dvdauthor, etc. I used yum to download everything needed, except for dvdstyler. Here's the command I used:

yum install kino dvdauthor totem mjpegtools wxGTK wxGTK-devel wxGTK-gl wxGTK-stc wxGTK-xrc. The yum.conf file for this is attached.

5 - If you want to see the product before burning it, you can use mplayer or xine or totem. I use totem because it supports DVD menus which I like to check before burning.

6 - Bottom line is that it's gotten much easier, thanks to all the people that developed the tools listed above.

[taylor65]

To run kino on FC2, you need to load the firewire modules. The easiest way I've found to do this is to put the following lines into /etc/rc.local:

modprobe raw1394
modprobe ohci1394
modprobe video1394

and then chmod 666 on /dev/raw1394 to allow non-root users to access the firewire device.

[jtang613]

I'd also recommend taking a look at qdvdauthor - its much more refined and feature-rich than dvdstyler. Also, kdenlive is a good video editing tool.

m2c

[TEC]

Originally Posted by taylor65

To run kino on FC2, you need to load the firewire modules. The easiest way I've found to do this is to put the following lines into /etc/rc.local:

modprobe raw1394
modprobe ohci1394
modprobe video1394

and then chmod 666 on /dev/raw1394 to allow non-root users to access the firewire device.

What if that doesn't work? When I try to use Kino to capture my new Panasonic PV-GS400 I'm told:

"WARNING: raw1394 kernel module not loaded or failure to read/write /dev/raw1394!"

But when I try "modprobe ieee1394" (or any of the other commonly mentioned 1394 modules) I'm told they don't exist. If I do "yum install libraw1394" from the DAG RPM repository, I'm told that libraw1394 already exists and is current.

/dev/raw1394 exists too.

Any ideas?

tec

[taylor65]

Funny you should post about this - I bought a new PC Sunday, and I got the same message after install FC2 on it. I ended up having to turn off kudzu (do this first from System Settings -> Server Settings -> Services), and upgrading to kernel 2.6.7.xxxx. I upgraded the kernel via synaptic (http://fedoraguide.org/contributors/...ic-how-to.html). Then rebooted, made sure to pick the new kernel, and it worked. So now I know why some people were saying that adding the 3 lines to rc.local didn't work for them. I'm not sure why it worked for me on my old PC - although I was using a PCI card for firewire on the old PC and the new PC has firewire built in. BTW, the reason for turning off kudzu is because the 2.6.7 kernel doesn't boot with kudzu discovering firewire - this is the original 'race' condition that caused firewire to not be enabled by default in the kernel that came with FC2. I'm hoping this is fixed in FC3.

[TEC]

Originally Posted by taylor65

Funny you should post about this - I bought a new PC Sunday, and I got the same message after install FC2 on it. I ended up having to turn off kudzu (do this first from System Settings -> Server Settings -> Services), and upgrading to kernel 2.6.7.xxxx. .. .

Hmmm. When I do "uname -a" on my machine, I'm told I'm running 2.6.8-1.521. So:

a. If you've just installed FC2, won't you have the same version?

In which case:

b. When you said "upgrading" did you really mean "downgrading"?

Also, what PC did you buy. I'm using an HP Pavilion a620n.

tec

[TEC]

Originally Posted by TEC

Hmmm. When I do "uname -a" on my machine, I'm told I'm running 2.6.8-1.521...

Weird. I decided to hunt around for a 2.7 kernel, rebooted to that, and modprobe now works.
And Kino is capturing from my cam.

So kernel 2.5 didn't work - nor did 2.8. But 2.7 is fine.

tec

[TEC]

Originally Posted by TEC

So kernel 2.5 didn't work - nor did 2.8. But 2.7 is fine.

Which should, of course, read "2.6.5", "2.6.8" and "2.6.7".

[taylor65]

I had installed the FC2 default 2.6.5-1.358 kernel on my new PC, and that didn't work for firewire. I have the FC2 disks from the first day it was released. I then installed 2.6.7-1.494.2.2 via synaptic, and then firewire worked. I have an HP a720n (AMD 3200, 1GB memory, 200GB HD, 2 firewire built-in).

[TEC]

Originally Posted by taylor65

I had installed the FC2 default 2.6.5-1.358 kernel on my new PC, and that didn't work for firewire. I have the FC2 disks from the first day it was released. ....

Does that mean that there can be different kernel versions in different FC2's? Mine is definitely 2.6.8, and I cut my CDs around June of this year.

Although ... hmmm. When I look in /boot I see that I too have a 2.6.5-1.358, as well as my now-default-one - 2.6.8-1.521. I wonder if that 2.6.5-1.358 is the original one, and then I've unwittingly upggraded (during some early clueless experimentation with up2date, apt and yum) to 2.6.8-1.521.

Following your advice, I did, as I said, manage to get capture working, but only by "downgrading" to 2.6.7-1.499_7.rhfc2.a using synaptic as you suggested (so I now have three kernels in /boot).

Still leaves me wondering why 1394 seems to work in 2.6.7 but not in 2.6.8. Is that something that The Powers That Be would be interesting in hearing about, do you think? If so, any ideas how to report the "bug" to said Powers?

Anyway, I'm now trying to read the captured files into Cinellera and it keeps crashing. I'm still gathering information before I dive in with a question.

tec

[TEC]

Originally Posted by TEC

Anyway, I'm now trying to read the captured files into Cinellera and it keeps crashing. I'm still gathering information before I dive in with a question.

Switched to the kernel you mentioned - 2.6.7-1.494.2.2 - and capturing via Kino, *and* editing with Cinelerra both work. So, very kernel sensitive. Ah well.

Thanks for the help.

tec
:

[headclark]

How about on FC3? Has anyone tried this howto on it?

[taylor65]

I posted a how-to for this for FC3 - it's titled something like 'setting up a desktop for the average user' - it has firewire in it.