DVD creator software
Hi all! I'm in a bit of a bind. I'm trying to create a dvd out of some home movies we've made of our foster son so we can give them to his birth parents and his grandparents as part of their Christmas gift. However, the only software I can find is commercial and I can't afford it - let alone know how to use it. I could do with some hints, please I need software that will allow me to create a DVD that is a mix of approximately 10 video clips (in MOV format as that is the only format for video that our digi-cam uses) and a slideshow of approx 50 photos - so it's definitely less than a DVD's worth of footage. FOSS software preferred but I will try shareware or commercial if I have to. Any help that can be provided would be greatly appreciated. Cheers James. -- A Mathematician named Klein Thought the mobius strip was divine Said he "If you glue The edges of two You'll get a cool bottle, like mine!"
On Sat, 2007-12-15 at 16:10 +1300, James Pluck wrote:
Hi all!
I'm in a bit of a bind. I'm trying to create a dvd out of some home movies we've made of our foster son so we can give them to his birth parents and his grandparents as part of their Christmas gift. However, the only software I can find is commercial and I can't afford it - let alone know how to use it.
I could do with some hints, please
I need software that will allow me to create a DVD that is a mix of approximately 10 video clips (in MOV format as that is the only format for video that our digi-cam uses) and a slideshow of approx 50 photos - so it's definitely less than a DVD's worth of footage.
I'd use kino to turn the photos into a video slideshow (you can drop a whole folder in, or you can do them one at a time with fancy transitions and panning .. your call) and put a nice soundtrack behind it.. then devede to turn the slideshow and clips into a DVD iso which you can burn with nautilus. devede will automagically convert them from any format gstreamer can process, so MOV's should be OK. It handles my camera's MJPEG AVI files with no issues. Both programs are available in the ubuntu repositories. You'll also need to install the gstreamer codecs; I suggest the ubuntu-restricted-extras metapackage which gives you basically all the stuff people used to use easyubuntu for..
On Sat, 2007-12-15 at 18:49 +1300, Bruce Kingsbury wrote:
then devede to turn the slideshow and clips into a DVD iso which you can burn with nautilus. devede will automagically convert them from any format gstreamer can process, so MOV's should be OK. It handles my camera's MJPEG AVI files with no issues.
Devede has some serious issues: - inability to name the titles - tendency to drop audio tracks, or replace them with noise - general inflexibility with DVD layout I'd much more strongly recommend qdvdauthor (if you prefer easy drag'n'drop gui) or dvdauthor (if you prefer command-line flags and script hacking). As for processing/sequencing the clips - kino has its adherents, but many folks find Cinelerra (cv.cinelerra.org) to be the best all-round video editing program for the *nix world. Cheers David
Both programs are available in the ubuntu repositories. You'll also need to install the gstreamer codecs; I suggest the ubuntu-restricted-extras metapackage which gives you basically all the stuff people used to use easyubuntu for..
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Devede has some serious issues: - inability to name the titles
Titles can have names? My DVD player doesn't show them afaik..
- tendency to drop audio tracks, or replace them with noise
Yes, forgot about that.. devede is VERY quick and easy for dumping a single video track to a disk. But if you have more than one video track, it messes up the sound fairly often.
- general inflexibility with DVD layout
Most people don't want 'flexability', they just want a silver disk that Granny can put in the dvd player and see movies of the grandkids. devede would be prefect for this task if it didn't have that annoying soundtrack bug..
I'd much more strongly recommend qdvdauthor (if you prefer easy drag'n'drop gui) or dvdauthor (if you prefer command-line flags and script hacking).
Ahhh.. I'll take a look at qdvdauthor. I've tried to use dvdauthor in the past, and I just couldn't figure out how to get from video clips to playable dvd without having to deal with menus and layout and options I just wasn't interested in. Less is more...
As for processing/sequencing the clips - kino has its adherents, but many folks find Cinelerra (cv.cinelerra.org) to be the best all-round video editing program for the *nix world.
kino is in the ubuntu repositories. I am strongly averse to the 'download binaries from random websites' way of installing software. Imho it's the Windows way of doing things and if it becomes normal practise in the Linux world, it will eventually lead to Linux suffering the kind of spyware issues that Windows suffers from. Also James is not 100% familiar with Linux so probably best to keep to what's easily installed from repos.
On Sun, 2007-12-16 at 09:10 +1300, Bruce Kingsbury wrote:
kino is in the ubuntu repositories. I am strongly averse to the 'download binaries from random websites' way of installing software. Imho it's the Windows way of doing things and if it becomes normal practise in the Linux world, it will eventually lead to Linux suffering the kind of spyware issues that Windows suffers from.
I strongly agree with Bruce. It also becomes a support issue as well. While it's cool to know how to extract the tar ball and compile it, how do you keep it up to date ?, maybe if it's one package you're familiar with, but what if you had a whole lot of packages ? you can lose track very easily and quickly.
Also James is not 100% familiar with Linux so probably best to keep to what's easily installed from repos.
Even for advanced user, using the repositories is definitely the way to go.
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On Sun, 2007-12-16 at 13:24 +1300, Lindsay Druett wrote:
It also becomes a support issue as well. While it's cool to know how to extract the tar ball and compile it, how do you keep it up to date ?
Don't download a tarball. Hook into the repo and keep your copy up to date.
I'd much more strongly recommend qdvdauthor (if you prefer easy drag'n'drop gui) or dvdauthor (if you prefer command-line flags and script hacking).
Ahhh.. I'll take a look at qdvdauthor. I've tried to use dvdauthor in the past, and I just couldn't figure out how to get from video clips to playable dvd without having to deal with menus and layout and options I just wasn't interested in. Less is more...
Nope.. qdvdauthor WAS the program I looked at last time. I have spend HOURS trying to figure out this program, and I still can't take one simple AVI file and put it on a disk that plays in a DVD player. It simply ... DOES ... NOT ... WORK.
On Sun, 2007-12-16 at 14:04 +1300, Bruce Kingsbury wrote:
Nope.. qdvdauthor WAS the program I looked at last time.
I have spend HOURS trying to figure out this program, and I still can't take one simple AVI file and put it on a disk that plays in a DVD player. It simply ... DOES ... NOT ... WORK.
Quick qdvdauthor howto: 1) Convert your home movie to a DVD-compliant MPEG: ffmpeg -i myhomemovie.avi -target pal-dvd myhomemovie.mpg 2) Start up qdvdauthor 3) Click on Help->QuickStartGuide and follow the instructions to the letter 4) Create an ISO image from the created DVD directory (assume you called the directory 'myhomemovie' in qdvdauthor): mkisofs -R -J -o myhomemovie.iso myhomemovie 5) Burn the DVD - via k3b or whatever your favourite burner prog is 6) Play and enjoy Cheers David
The problem I have is there are 10 clips and 54 stills to be included. That and I don't have a clue how to do it - so it's been a major learning curve. I've tried a 30 day trial of dvdPro (Windows app) which created a slideshow and played one clip quite happily when I made my trial disc. However now that I have all 10 clips on there and all stills in the slideshow it grumbles about "read data exceeds buffer" and the documentation doesn't say what the buffer is nor how I can change the buffer size. I suspect it's trying to build the dvd in ram (I only have 1Gb). But I can't seem to find a way around it. Question: Is there a limit to the number of clips/movies you can have attached to a single menu page? That is the next thing I am going to try - split the clips over 3 menu pages - and see if it will rebuild that ok. *sigh* Back to the drawing board :) J On Dec 17, 2007 7:22 PM, David McNab <david(a)rebirthing.co.nz> wrote:
On Sun, 2007-12-16 at 14:04 +1300, Bruce Kingsbury wrote:
Nope.. qdvdauthor WAS the program I looked at last time.
I have spend HOURS trying to figure out this program, and I still can't take one simple AVI file and put it on a disk that plays in a DVD player. It simply ... DOES ... NOT ... WORK.
Quick qdvdauthor howto:
1) Convert your home movie to a DVD-compliant MPEG:
ffmpeg -i myhomemovie.avi -target pal-dvd myhomemovie.mpg
2) Start up qdvdauthor
3) Click on Help->QuickStartGuide and follow the instructions to the letter
4) Create an ISO image from the created DVD directory (assume you called the directory 'myhomemovie' in qdvdauthor):
mkisofs -R -J -o myhomemovie.iso myhomemovie
5) Burn the DVD - via k3b or whatever your favourite burner prog is
6) Play and enjoy
Cheers David
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-- James Pluck PalmOS Ergo Sum "Dear IRS: I would like to cancel my subscription. Please remove my name from your mailing list..."
Quick qdvdauthor howto:
1) Convert your home movie to a DVD-compliant MPEG:
ffmpeg -i myhomemovie.avi -target pal-dvd myhomemovie.mpg
Ahh, ok... I've made some progress. qdvdauthor has an auto-convert feature that uses mplayer/mencoder, but mplayer isn't a dependency of the package and I didn't already have it installed. So now it's working, but my converted AVI's end up playing at about 1.5 times the correct speed. I might try converting them to the correct format with ffmpeg first.. it would be really, really cool though if qdvdauthor itself could just take any diveo as input, used ffmpeg or mplayer to convert it (correctly!) and actually had everything it needed as package dependencies.. it looks like that's what they were trying to do but if it doesn't actually work it's worse than not having it at all.
Bruce Kingsbury wrote:
Ahh, ok...
I've made some progress. qdvdauthor has an auto-convert feature that uses mplayer/mencoder, but mplayer isn't a dependency of the package and I didn't already have it installed.
So now it's working, but my converted AVI's end up playing at about 1.5 times the correct speed.
I might try converting them to the correct format with ffmpeg first.. it would be really, really cool though if qdvdauthor itself could just take any diveo as input, used ffmpeg or mplayer to convert it (correctly!) and actually had everything it needed as package dependencies.. it looks like that's what they were trying to do but if it doesn't actually work it's worse than not having it at all.
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I was wondering about creating a DVD slide show for stills and audio. Some time ago I tried qdvdauthor but could never get it to work. It either hung on me part way through or simply shutdown. -- Ron Dean 2 Shannon Place Nawton Hamilton Ph 8493904
I was wondering about creating a DVD slide show for stills and audio. Some time ago I tried qdvdauthor but could never get it to work.
It either hung on me part way through or simply shutdown.
Yes, qdvd's video slideshow feature is also broken. I'd suggest doing the slideshow part in kino, and then exporting it as a standard DVD mpeg. qdvdauthor should then be able to convert this into a DVD filesystem for you. As for burning, I just put in a blank disk and wrote the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders using the inbuilt (nautilus?) burning tool. It seems to be playing OK.
On Dec 20, 2007 4:06 PM, Bruce Kingsbury <zcat(a)wired.net.nz> wrote:
I was wondering about creating a DVD slide show for stills and audio. Some time ago I tried qdvdauthor but could never get it to work.
It either hung on me part way through or simply shutdown.
Yes, qdvd's video slideshow feature is also broken.
Here's some reviews on DVD burning software: http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/263387/88c614be1e0f1f26/ There are links to Part 1 of series from this too. Please note that this URL is NOT to be sent further than this list please - the article will be available for free in 1 week (I am allowed to do this)
participants (6)
-
Bruce Kingsbury -
David McNab -
Ian McDonald -
James Pluck -
Lindsay Druett -
Ron Dean