creating video dvd

gunnix · 2007-03-11 19:48:44

Hi,

I've tried for the last week to make dvd's playable in standalone video players. I converted a whole bunch of videos with mencoder to the VCD format (since it's bad quality videos anyway). Now I got all these .mpg videos and I have burned them already a few times on dvd but the dvd player always says "cannot read disc". I'm using a DVD+RW to try it out. I did only once burn to a DVD+R but it didn't work either.

Do I need to do anything special to make it work?

I heard DVD+R doesn't work as good with many players as DVD-R, is that the problem?

Bah, I really don't like standalone dvd players...

junglepeanut · 2007-03-11 19:56:42

Did you create a menu? Or maybe it is called format for the disk...I think this is done with DVDauthor or similar tool. I have always done via step by step commands, but I hear any2dvd is pretty good. Also I think there is a wiki for the step by step.

These should help.
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mak … _DVD_Video
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions … ?p=2242797

skottish · 2007-03-11 19:56:59

My experience has been that DVD-R disks work, DVD+R discs don't unless you jump through some hoops. Also, bitrate is going to be an issue. While DVD players are supposed to play up to and around 10Mbps, I've never successfully had a disc work correctly over 4Mbps. Mencoder probably handled that though.

noriko · 2007-03-11 19:59:51

there should be no problem if the disc is burned properly...

i use man dvd to encode+burn my dvd on my standalone divx/dvd player and have no issues whatsoever .. dvd-rw, dvd-r .. cd-r..
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?d … hans=&SeB=

gunnix · 2007-03-11 20:20:35

Is it not possible to burn VCD format videos on a DVD? I don't want to convert the video files to DVD format because those take more space and the quality of the videos is bad anyway.. Most programs seem to want to convert to dvd format.

I tried devede which took a long time converting and then crashed for no reason. I dunno how to skip the converting step...

Tried qdvdauthor but it crashed twice already in 20 mins and I couldn't figure it out.

dvdauthor crashed while creating ... I don't know why I'd need it, because it creates VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_S which I don't think I need?

I burned the dvd with growisofs and the -dvd-compat option. But it didn't work.

Damn, this sounds like whining but I really don't get it.

I did once make a dvd with nero in windows and it was easy.. maybe I was lucky.

edit: downloading nero for linux..

Last edited by gunnix (2007-03-11 20:30:39)

retsaw · 2007-03-11 23:22:34

You should be able to burn VCD files to a DVD, but VCD files are mpeg-1 and DVD are mpeg-2 and you can create DVD files at the same resolution and bitrate as VCD files if you want which should be better quality than the VCD files, so there isn't any reason to use VCD files unless that is what you started with. I did actually do this once and I put ~10 hours of video on a single layer disk with the video encoded at 352x288 mpeg-2, however the end results looked pretty poor, but the source wasn't very good to begin with.

Unless your DVD player is capable of playing plain mpeg video files, you will need to convert the files to the DVD-Video disk structure using dvdauthor or your DVD player just won't be able to play them, in other words you probably do need the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS dirs and other files dvdauthor creates. Doing this manually with dvdauthor is quite a chore, but there are a number of front ends that will do this for you, I can't recommend any however, since the last time I looked I either couldn't get them working or they just didn't let me do things the way I wanted, so I always end up doing evrything myself which can be quite time consuming if you want to do more than put a single file on a disk.

pelle.k · 2007-03-11 23:32:51

My experience has been that DVD-R disks work, DVD+R discs don't unless you jump through some hoops

Acctually, DVD+R is a _safer_ bet, _if_ you set the booktype to "DVD-ROM". I guess that is what you meant?

skottish · 2007-03-12 00:58:49

pelle.k wrote:

Acctually, DVD+R is a _safer_ bet, _if_ you set the booktype to "DVD-ROM". I guess that is what you meant?

Like this?

dvd+rw-booktype -dvd-rom -unit+r /dev/dvd

I never heard of this before today. This is very cool. Thanks in advance.

Last edited by skottish (2007-03-12 00:59:30)

gunnix · 2007-03-12 01:25:58

Well I did get a dvd burned and working ! Amazing

Did use devede to convert videos and make an iso file which I then just had to burn. Devede is very nice!
It's actually just a frontend to mencoder, dvdauthor and some other tools, not like other programs which need a lot of stuff ...

I had one problem though and that is that it made all videos 4/3 while some needed to be 16/9, going to add the mencoder commands and hope it works. The sucky thing though is that you can't just add already good converted videos in it, it always converts them again! Heard that would change in a next version...

This said... I did do it on my brothers ubuntu computer because I don't have a DVD writer. I saw there's no devede package for arch.

noriko · 2007-03-12 09:38:06

there's a pkg in aur
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?d … hans=&SeB=

pelle.k · 2007-03-12 17:32:13

Like this?

dvd+rw-booktype -dvd-rom -unit+r /dev/dvd

Yes, but i have flashed my dvd-drive BIOS to always write +R as dvd-rom. works flawlessly on all dvd players
I only use "Verbatim" or "Sony" dvd+r:s though. No "noname" crap. Another tip is to avoid mp3 as sound. Use ac3. (too bad there's no free dts encoder, because it works _very_ good too...)

Arch Linux

#1 2007-03-11 19:48:44

creating video dvd

#2 2007-03-11 19:56:42

Re: creating video dvd

#3 2007-03-11 19:56:59

Re: creating video dvd

#4 2007-03-11 19:59:51

Re: creating video dvd

#5 2007-03-11 20:20:35

Re: creating video dvd

#6 2007-03-11 23:22:34

Re: creating video dvd

#7 2007-03-11 23:32:51

Re: creating video dvd

#8 2007-03-12 00:58:49

Re: creating video dvd

#9 2007-03-12 01:25:58

Re: creating video dvd

#10 2007-03-12 09:38:06

Re: creating video dvd

#11 2007-03-12 17:32:13

Re: creating video dvd

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