Arch Linux

alterkacker

Member

From: Peoples Republic of Boulder

Registered: 2005-01-08

Posts: 52

How to shrink a long MPEG2 to fit on a DVD?

I have a long (5.7GB) MPEG2 file that I'd like to burn to a 4.7GB DVD. I'm a total ignoramus w.r.t. multimedia processing on Linux - how can I do that? Note that the running time on the movie is only about 1:15.

And in case you're wondering, the movie is "My Man Godfrey" from the wonderful public domain media site http://www.archive.org/details/movies.

Thanks.

jaboua

Member

Registered: 2005-11-05

Posts: 634

Re: How to shrink a long MPEG2 to fit on a DVD?

Try one of these:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Create_a_DVD:Encode

waltm

Member

From: alabama

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 69

Re: How to shrink a long MPEG2 to fit on a DVD?

A couple of thoughts (or what I'd do)

install mplayer, ffmpeg and build tovid in aur.

Then I'd go back and grab the mpeg4 from archive.org of your movie.

at a command prompt do:
tovid -dvd -in my_man_godfrey.avi -out My_Man_Godfrey

you get a mpg2 ready to turn into a DVD (eventually)

makexml -dvd -in My_Man_Godfrey.mpg -out MyManGodfrey

you get an xml file for the next step which creates a burnable ISO

makedvd MyManGodfrey.xml
or

makedvd -burn -device /dev/dvd -speed 4 MyManGodfrey.xml
to burn it.

Or try this and see if it shrinks any (probably not)

ffmpeg -i my_man_godfrey.mpeg -target ntsc-dvd test.mpg
If works can rename

I'm downloading the mpeg2 and may have other ideas after it finishes.  The file size is way off for a about a movie of that length.

Good luck

Echo

Member

From: Ohio, United States

Registered: 2006-05-16

Posts: 239

Re: How to shrink a long MPEG2 to fit on a DVD?

You could shrink the mpeg with the following:

- tcprobe will identify what makes up your mpeg2 file. For example, maybe m2v for video and ac3 for audio.

- Use tcextract to demux the mpeg2 file. You will want to run tcextract twice. Once to extract the video stream and once to extract the audio stream.

- tcrequant will shrink the video stream you extracted with tcextract above. The audio stream remains untouched.

- mplex to multiplex the video and audio streams back together.

Now hopefully you have a dvd compliant movie that will fit on your dvd and is ready to author. Varsha is a good program for that or dvdauthor if you like using the command line.

Tcextract, tcprobe and tcrequant are part of Transcode (in the extra repository).

waltm

Member

From: alabama

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 69

Re: How to shrink a long MPEG2 to fit on a DVD?

in the FWIW department, I got the mpeg.  Its encoded with mp2 video(oops! mp2 audio).   Ffmpeg recodes with ac3 video and results in a much smaller file and fits on a plain old DVD.

Why can't they make opening credits like that anymore.  BTW, thanks for the steer, Betty Boop is always worth watching.

alterkacker

Member

From: Peoples Republic of Boulder

Registered: 2005-01-08

Posts: 52

Re: How to shrink a long MPEG2 to fit on a DVD?

Thanks to everyone for the help. It might be a few days before I have time to try anything but I'll post back with the results.

As to the opening credits - yep, they're something special. And the opening scene in the dump is beautiful B&W cinematography. Glad to have passed on the tip.