Creating DVD Movies

[Mark Kane]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2006, at 17:48:39 -0700, Derrick Ryalls wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> i was wondering if anyone had a good tool recommendation for creating
> DVD movies with FreeBSD.  Since I have a child growing up, it is
> appealing to me to make a copy of their favorite DVD and burn it so
> they can handle the copy, not the original (legal to make backup
> copies).  I also was thinking it could be handy to author my own dvds,
> but that might not be for a while.
> 
> So far, I can use mplayer to get the DVD to an avi file, but I can't
> find anything to get it back onto a dvd.  I have tried dvdauthor, but
> the app kept crashing.  Does anyone have any suggestions for this?

Hi.

I don't normally back up DVDs so I'm not sure the best software to do
that. I did a quick ports search and "multimedia/lxdvdrip" looks nice,
and may do exactly what you want all in one program.

As for dvdauthor crashing, I would guess it's because you're not giving
it the right format for a DVD. AVI files can't go to DVD, you need to
convert it to MPEG-2 PS and the proper specifications. For this, I use
a GTK+ program called Avidemux2 (it's in multimedia/avidemux2), although
ffmpeg or mencoder should work also. Here are my steps for an AVI file
to DVD: 

1) Avidemux to video "DVD". Set aspect ratios in "Configure" and set
"DVD Res" in the "Filters" area. If the audio is not already AC3 (check
from the A/V information button on the toolbar), set audio to "FFM
AC3". Set output format at bottom to "MPEG PS A+V". Save the video
"filename.mpg". This one is the longest step, the other two are quite a
bit shorter.

2) Take outputted mpeg file and run it through dvdauthor: 

dvdauthor --video=ntsc+16:9+720xfull -t -f filename.mpg -o output

3) Burn the authored DVD with dvd+rw tools: 

growisofs -dvd-video -Z /dev/cd0 output

For a simple backup though I'd check out lxdvdrip or search through
ports to see if there is a faster solution. I don't see much sense in
going from DVD to AVI then back to DVD when you can just rip directly
from the DVD and burn it back. I provided that info for when you
want to author your own videos though. :)

Hope that helps.

-Mark

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