Convert any video file to DVD with open source tools (Linux.com) [LWN.net]

Manolis Tzanidakis shows how to use Linux tools to create DVDs in a Linux.com article. "You've just downloaded the new episode of your favorite video podcast, and you'd like to watch it on your big-screen TV. Unfortunately, the video is encoded in XviD or QuickTime format, which your DVD player doesn't support. Don't worry -- here's how you can convert any video file to DVD using dvdauthor and MPlayer."

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Convert any video file to DVD with open source tools (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 27, 2006 22:42 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Do not use MPlayer as the article suggests. Use FFMPEG and MJPEG Tools; and follow this tutorial from a gentoo forum instead; I found it on dvdauthor's page.

I have generated cheesy DVDs with mencoder (the MPEG-2 was horribly wrong), but so far ffmpeg and mplex have worked like a charm.

Convert any video file to DVD with open source tools (Linux.com)

Posted Apr 28, 2006 14:56 UTC (Fri) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

Bugs and misfeatures in mencoder are legion.

It is amazing that you have to in many cases guess the framerate of the source data and inform mencoder of this on the command line, and even when correct it will still randomly drop frames. I'm sure some mplayer developer will come out of the woodwork and provide some longwinded rationale for why in the contorted worldview of the mplayer codebase this makes sense, but from a use case, it doesn't. Mplayer knows how to decode the source format, not me. Why is there no way to transform the video stream from one format to another without drastically altering time timescale of the result (which invariably happens).

Then there are the frequent crashbugs, and the invalidly created headers on output files and so on and so on.

mencoder is an unfortunate necessity when working with proprietary formats which have not been strongly reverse engineered, but when you can avoid them, avoid mencoder/mplayer too.

Most video codecs in the wild cannot be implemented as free software

Posted Apr 27, 2006 22:49 UTC (Thu) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

It's unfortunate that the article title misleads the reader. The dvdauthor and mplayer programs are themselves free software, but are insufficient to convert the majority of movie files out there. For that, non-free (patent-encumbered and restrictively licensed) codec libraries are required.

Until the elimination of patent restrictions that prevent free software implementations of common codecs (e.g. the Sorensen video codecs), it's not true to say this job can be done with "open source tools". At best those tools help, but are incapable of doing the job without non-free software.