Creating Dvds from files

Acid7711 · 2006-12-18 16:33:23

This is driving me crazy. I want to make some dvd's and all I have are a ton of mp4s. I don't care what I need to do, but I've wasted the last 3 hours of my time screwing around. I found a nice dvd creator for Linux, Great! Problem is it accepts only mpegs as input. I need to find a way to convert my mp4s to mpegs. Anyone have any suggestions?

I even got desperate enough to goto another computer in my house that has XP installed and all that resulted in was 200 popups and 4 hardlocks/reboots. Yay!

Thanks in advance

chrismortimore · 2006-12-18 16:45:49

mencoder should be able to do it. Take a look at the (giant) manual for it for more hints.

karag · 2006-12-18 17:37:06

basic conversion to mpeg can (I think) be done easily with mencoder. If you want to make dvd's out of them, though, you need to be aware of certain things.
I find this thread a good starting point.

Snarkout · 2006-12-18 18:09:00

I've used mp2enc, mencoder and kmpg2 in the past with varying success for converting mp4s and avis into dvd capable mpeg2. Generally, though, I'd have to say that the end result is not worth the hassle and time spent. The quality is generally pretty crappy, and often there are serious sync issues to overcome. Sometimes these can be addressed if the issue is actually just sync, but if it's an issue where either the audio or video are running at different rates, forget it (IME at least)

smoon · 2006-12-18 18:22:04

If you don't need fancy animated menus your best bet is probably to use Tovid. It's the best thing for creating Video DVD's/VCD's from arbitrary video files I've seen so far. I guess there's a PKGBUILD for it in AUR as well.

Acid7711 · 2006-12-18 19:46:08

Thanks for the tips. I'll look into them after work. I did something similar to this mmmmmmmmmmmmany years ago and have sense completely forgotten what I used and did. It's not really that important, but I thought it would be nice.

Btw karag - Thanks! That page looks awesome.

I appreciate everyone's info and help.

skottish · 2006-12-18 19:53:57

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Mencoder_I … tion_Guide

I've used this to learn how to create DVDs.

Acid7711 · 2006-12-19 05:50:28

With the link that Karag gave me, I've created a script. My skills are pretty limited in this, so don't laugh too hard. I'm sure this sucks, but it does what I need it to. If anyone else wants to use it ever, just plop in the file names in the blanks with yours and run it.

It:
1.) converts the mp4 to an avi
2.) removes the mp4 file
3.) converts the avi file to dvd format
4.) removes the avi file
5.) converts the dvd format to mpg
6.) removes the dvd format files

Hopefully someone can find this useful. I know it's a basic script and not very advanced, but it's one of my first hha.

#!/bin/sh

mencoder -o "FILENAMEHERE.avi" -ovc lavc -lavcopts vbitrate=5000:vhq -ffourcc DX50 -oac pcm -srate 48000 -ofps 29.97 "FILENAMEHERE.mp4"

rm "FILENAMEHERE.mp4"

transcode -i "FILENAMEHERE.avi" -y ffmpeg --export_prof dvd-ntsc --export_asr 3 -o "FILENAMEHERE" -D0 -b224 -N 0x2000 -s2 -m "FILENAMEHERE.ac3" -J modfps=clonetype=3 --export_fps 29.97 

rm "FILENAMEHERE.avi"

mplex -f 8 -o "FILENAMEHERE.mpg" "FILENAMEHERE.m2v" "FILENAMEHERE.ac3"

rm "FILENAMEHERE.m2v"
rm "FILENAMEHERE.ac3"

Purch · 2006-12-19 07:01:26

You can use oneliner to do mpeg2 movies from what ever format that mencoder understands. I use this to do mpeg2 from motion-jpeg .mov films.

mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf 
      -vf scale=720:576,harddup,softskip -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 
      -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:keyint=15:acodec=ac3:abitrate=192:aspect=16/9 -ofps 25 
      -o movie.mpg movie.mov

You can use mp2 audio as well.
This oneliner will force the picture size to the 16:9 ratio without any cropping.

chrismortimore · 2006-12-19 08:11:56

Acid7711: Couple of things:

1. I don't like the rm "FILENAMEHERE.mp4". It's better to leave the original file in place just in case something goes wrong.
2. Change all of the "FILENAMEHERE"s to $1. $1 holds the first argument passed to the script, so if you wanted to convert "bananaman.mp4", and the script was called "mp42mpg", you'd run "mp42mpg bananaman" and let it work it's magic. Just saves a little time

Acid7711 · 2006-12-19 17:42:53

Thanks for the tips again guys.

I was already paranoid to be converting my original files since I've spent well over a year gathering them. So, the reason I was using rm command was because it was simply removing the files that I moved to another location to do this with Noooo way would I chance loosing the originals heh Another reason I was removing them is because each of those files is over a gig. After it makes 3 copies it eats up a lot of space. It wouldn't matter, but every season that I'm converting to dvd has like 30 gigs of files in it. x2 or x3, eeep. I just don't wanna run out of space.

Maybe some of you can help. This is driving me crazy. I've done a lot of programming in mannnny langages, maybe I'm just stupid but I can't get this thing to work just right. I'm going to try to make a list of file names at the top (file3="movie3" file4="movie4", etc, then set the total to the number of files I'm looking for convert.

But I'm having trouble with getting the script to echo Movie1.avi, Movie2.avi, Movie3.avi, etc every pass without manually putting it in. Again, I'm sure this has more to do with the " " and the ' ' usage that I'm screwing up here. I've gotten it do come back with "file1.avi" but not the actual file name.

I'm not very good at these shell scripts quite yet, and I know this is a super simple, and really pointless thing to make and put effort and time into, but this will work wonders while I'm at work and/or sleeping

Here's my crappy code so far:

#!/bin/sh

i="1"
total="3"

file1="Movie1"
file2="Movie2"
file3="Movie2"


while [ $i -lt $total ]
do
    echo "file"$i".avi"


    i=$((++i))
done


exit 0

Thanks again. Sorry for simple mistakes. I know they're in there.

chrismortimore · 2006-12-19 23:08:51

Not sure if this is what you're after, but I think this may help...

#!/bin/bash
start=1
end=3
file[1]="movie1.avi"
file[2]="movie2.avi"
file[3]="movie3.avi"
for i in `seq ${start} ${end}`
do
        echo ${file[$i]}
done

Acid7711 · 2006-12-21 06:27:39

Yes, that works Thank you.

I'm having a heck of a time getting these stupid things to create how I want. hah I guess that's why I'm not going into multimedia haha.

Thanks for your help.

chrismortimore · 2006-12-21 09:33:55

I find that Perl is better for scripting than Bash, simply because it's a dirty language and you can force it to do what you want, regardless of whether you should be able to. Have you had a look into that? Don't get me wrong, I love Bash, but sometimes it can be so picky, it just gets incredably annoying.

Snarkout · 2006-12-21 14:06:19

I love perl, but then I'm a complete hack. Anyone I know who does "serious coding" looks down their nose at it. Personally, since all I do is administration tasks and quick and dirty scripts, I find it to be a lifesaver. I also like bash a lot, though. My point is that if you like shell scripting, you may like perl. I do.

tomk · 2006-12-21 14:33:39

Interesting thread.

Your original desire to create DVDs seems to have been elbowed aside by the need to write a working script. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but if you want to actually create DVDs, I'd recommend using existing tools. tovid has already been suggested, and works very well IMO.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-12-18 16:33:23

Creating Dvds from files

#2 2006-12-18 16:45:49

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#3 2006-12-18 17:37:06

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#4 2006-12-18 18:09:00

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#5 2006-12-18 18:22:04

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#6 2006-12-18 19:46:08

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#7 2006-12-18 19:53:57

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#8 2006-12-19 05:50:28

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#9 2006-12-19 07:01:26

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#10 2006-12-19 08:11:56

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#11 2006-12-19 17:42:53

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#12 2006-12-19 23:08:51

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#13 2006-12-21 06:27:39

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#14 2006-12-21 09:33:55

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#15 2006-12-21 14:06:19

Re: Creating Dvds from files

#16 2006-12-21 14:33:39

Re: Creating Dvds from files

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