Making DVD/SVCD/VCD's under Linux

From CLUG Wiki

Contents 1 Intro 2 Get the Necessary Tools 3 Converting Movies to MPEG2 3.1 MPEG2 DVD From AVI with Existing AC3 Soundtrack 3.2 MPEG2 DVD from AVI 3.3 MPEG2 VCD from AVI 3.4 Mpeg2 SVCD from AVI 4 Getting the Stuff on the Disk 4.1 DVDs 4.1.1 Using DVDAuthor to create DVD structures 4.2 SVCDs and VCDs 4.3 Notes 5 Links

Intro

Documenting my travels into the realm of multimedia. This is my approach (for now at least) to making DVDs, VCDs and SVCDs under a Linux environment. Instructions are for Debian(ish) systems, but it shouldn't be to hard to get it working under any GNU/Linux OS.

Get the Necessary Tools

For encoding to MPEG2 I'll be using MPlayer+MEncoder

I compiled MPlayer from source, so just get the tarball from the above mentioned site, extract, run configure and install everything that it asks for.

For Debian you can simply do:

# apt-get install mplayer-586 mencoder-586 

You can substitute "586" for your system architecture. Simply do:

$ apt-cache search '(mplayer|mencoder)'

to find the right packages.

Apt will also install all the necessary libraries for encoding/decoding AVI/MPEG streams and all the other nonsense.

Next we need to get DVDAuthor to create the DVD structures for you:

# apt-get install dvdauthor

You also need dvd+rw-tools

# apt-get install dvd+rw-tools

OK, so you can (probably) apt-get all this done by doing :

# apt-get install mplayer-586 mencoder-586 dvdauthor dvd+rw-tools

Converting Movies to MPEG2

Before you can use DVDauthor (or k3b or whatever to burn (S)VCDs for you), you first need to convert whatever format you got the relevant MPEG2 format.

Also, we use PAL over here, so these commands are centered around that.

A basic MEncoder command-line to encode a file to MPEG2 for DVD will look something like this

$ mencoder -oac <audio-codec> -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd \
 -vf scale=<X>:<Y>,harddup \
 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=<buffer>:vrc_maxrate=9800:\
 vbitrate=5000:keyint=15:aspect=<aspect> \
 -ofps 25 -o outfile.mpg infile.avi

First, lets get some info about the file we'll be converting:

$ mplayer -vo dummy -identify yourmovie.avi 2> /dev/null

This should give you some information on the file. Here's one for an AVI I got:

AVI file format detected.
ID_VIDEO_ID=0
ID_AUDIO_ID=1
VIDEO:  [DIV3]  352x288  24bpp  29.970 fps  428.7 kbps (52.3 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, 16 bit (0x10), ratio: 12000->192000 (96.0 kbit)
Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm:mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
==========================================================================
ID_FILENAME=mymovie.avi
ID_VIDEO_FORMAT=DIV3
ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=428720
ID_VIDEO_WIDTH=352
ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT=288
ID_VIDEO_FPS=29.970
ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=0.0000
ID_AUDIO_CODEC=mp3
ID_AUDIO_FORMAT=85
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=96000
ID_AUDIO_RATE=48000
ID_AUDIO_NCH=2
ID_LENGTH=1478

Now, the above gives us some interesting information regarding the the file we want to encode

My file above has got a MP3 soundtrack, but we want it in AC3, so, to make a DVD compatible MPEG2 output for it, I shall do the following

$ mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd \
 -vf scale=720:576,harddup -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 outfile.mpg mymovie.avi

this will give me outfile.mpg

to see how it looks now try:

$ mplayer -vo x11 outfile.mpg 

MPEG2 DVD From AVI with Existing AC3 Soundtrack

If MPlayer reports that your AVI file already has AC3 encoded surround sound, you can do the following to preserve it (and avoid re-encoding it):

$ mencoder -oac copy -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd \
 -vf scale=720:576,harddup \
 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:\
 vbitrate=5000:keyint=15:aspect=16/9 \
 -ofps 25 -o outfile.mpg mymovie.avi

MPEG2 DVD from AVI

$ mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd \
 -vf scale=720:576,harddup -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 outfile.mpg mymovie.avi

MPEG2 VCD from AVI

$ mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=xvcd \
 -vf scale=352:288,harddup -srate 44100 -af lavcresample=44100 \
 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video:keyint=15:vrc_buf_size=327:vrc_minrate=1152:\
 vbitrate=1152:vrc_maxrate=1152:acodec=mp2:abitrate=224 \
 -ofps 25 -o outfile.mpg mymovie.avi

Mpeg2 SVCD from AVI

$ mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=xsvcd \
 -vf scale=480:576,harddup -srate 44100 -af lavcresample=44100 \
 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:mbd=2:keyint=15:vrc_buf_size=917: \
 vrc_minrate=600:vbitrate=2500:vrc_maxrate=2500:acodec=mp2:abitrate=224 \
 -ofps 25 -o outfile.mpg mymovie.avi

Getting the Stuff on the Disk

DVDs

To get your shiny new MPEG2s on your DVD+/-R disc we'll first need to create the DVD structures and then use growisofs to burn them to your disc.

Using DVDAuthor to create DVD structures

dvdauthor takes two arguments that you have to worry about for now:

-o 

output directory

-x 

input xml file

Here is a basic xml file (that does work):

<dvdauthor>
  <vmgm>
    <menus>
      <video format="pal" aspect="16:9" resolution="720x576" widescreen="nopanscan" />
      <audio />
      <pgc entry="title" pause="inf">
        <button name="1">jump title 1;</button>
      </pgc>
    </menus>
  </vmgm>
  <titleset>
    <titles>
      <pgc>
        <vob file="mymovie.mpg" chapters="0,1:01,5:01,10:01,15:01,20:01,25:01" />
        <post>call vmgm menu 1;</post>
      </pgc>
    </titles>
  </titleset>
</dvdauthor>

Basically, you specify your menus and stuff, along with video and audio options. If you don't specify video and audio options, DVDAuthor will try and grab it from the file that you supply.

For more info on this, check out the xml file format:

$ man dvdauthor 

Now you need to create a working directory for DVDAuthor:

$ mkdir -p dvd

Once you have created your XML file and working directory, all you need to do is:

$ dvdauthor -o dvd/ -x myxmlfile.xml 

and watch the magic!

After it finishes it you should be left with something like this:

$ ls -lr dvd/*
dvd/VIDEO_TS:
total 523544
-rw-r--r--  1 foo bar 535496704 2006-02-07 20:57 VTS_01_1.VOB
-rw-r--r--  1 foo bar     28672 2006-02-07 20:57 VTS_01_0.IFO
-rw-r--r--  1 foo bar     28672 2006-02-07 20:57 VTS_01_0.BUP
-rw-r--r--  1 foo bar     12288 2006-02-07 20:57 VIDEO_TS.IFO
-rw-r--r--  1 foo bar     12288 2006-02-07 20:57 VIDEO_TS.BUP

dvd/AUDIO_TS:
total 0

You can verify if everything works before burning the disk, using xine. Xine allows to play a dvd content from the local filesystem instead of the disk:

$ xine dvd://`pwd`/dvd

You can now use Growisofs to burn it to disc:

$ growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -dvd-video dvd/

Executing 'mkisofs -dvd-video dvd/ | builtin_dd of=/dev/dvd obs=32k seek=0'
INFO:   UTF-8 character encoding detected by locale settings.
        Assuming UTF-8 encoded filenames on source filesystem,
        use -input-charset to override.
/dev/dvd: "Current Write Speed" is 4.1x1385KBps.

Viola! Freshly Roasted DVDs.

SVCDs and VCDs

TODO

add cmdline way to do this

Notes

If you have trouble with the aspect ratio being out of bounds, try setting the aspect="" attribute in the DVDAuthor xml file to "4:3"

Links

• MPlayer and MEncoder
  • Home Page
  • English Docs (far better info) (see also the mplayer-doc package)