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DVD Authoring In Linux

Posted by timothy on from the diy-easter-eggs dept.

leming writes "This article in Linux Journal explains low-cost DVD authoring available in Linux. Traditionally, DVD authoring has been an expensive affair. Full-featured professional applications can cost thousands of dollars, while cheaper products, such as Apple's iDVD, have arbitrary restrictions that significantly reduce their usefulness. A new open-source effort, dvdauthor, is bringing the possibility of low-cost, professional-grade DVD authoring to Linux. Although it doesn't yet support all the features of the DVD specification, development is proceeding at a fast pace, and new features are being added with each release."

1 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's nice but... by Ian+Pointer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hey, I'm the writer :).

    Yes, you're absolutely right that video producers should be thinking about the video rather than wrestling with the tools. And yes, a GUI would make things a lot easier (there is an effort, Polidori under way to provide one). But on the other hand, commercial DVD authoring applications are not cheap, especially if you want one that takes advantage of the more esoteric features. dvdauthor on the other hand, doesn't have any of these restrictions, so if you're an amateur who wants to play around with making DVDs, but don't want to fork out the $1,000 or so for Scenarist, it's a good trade-off (also, the new release of dvdauthor has created a new way of specifying the layout, so it's not quite as hideous as my article makes out anymore ;)).

    But, yes, I am looking forward to the day when I can can click on GnomeDVD and drag MPEG2 across the desktop :)