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DVD Authoring Under Linux?
To add on to phorm's query, smz420 asks: "A few months ago, I acquired a DVD burner and have had a lot of fun creating discs. While they come out well, they're very much cookie-cutter, due to the software I've been using to create them. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of flexibility built into the consumer level authoring systems out there, and I'd like to take my discs to the next level. Can anyone in Slashdot-land recommend books, links or software packages that could lead me down the road towards 'prosumer' DVD authoring? I'd like to be able to take full control over authoring: design my own button shapes and structures; place text where-ever I want on a menu page; create custom navigation structures, and possibly plant an easter egg or two. So far, I've tried Pinnacle Studio 8, Sonic MyDVD and Nero on Windows 2000. While each had very good aspects to them, all of them fell short of enabling 'next level' DVD authoring. Any advice would be most appreciated."
I believe the problem with DVD authoring is, that to write a decent program for it, you'll have to pay like $50.000 to get the specs.
Otherwise you'll have to painstakingly reverse the entire format. There is already great progress with this I presume since there are some nice open source programs.
But no professional grade software under Linux as far as I know..
That sounds a lot like the Rioxio Easy Media Creator 6 I have... which is adequate for a DVD n00b, but the OP was asking about the next level. Unless there is some phenominal improvements in version 7 over v6, which there apparently isn't, then there's no way I'd recommend it.
Not trying to flame or troll, but I mean, seriously, if you posted asking about a software solution for your Mac and people started posting about all sorts of Windows and Linux software, wouldn't you be annoyed? Why is it that Mac people feel compelled to do this all the time? =)
That said, there's lots of packages for the PC like iDVD that work very well. The Nero tools are very well done, but I think have the same limitations as iDVD - very simplistic and template driven for the average user, with a lot of limitations as to what you can do.
DVD Studio Pro looks very nice, but aside from it not running on his computer, it's $500... =)
Personally I'm interested in what people say in this thread as I recently got a DVD burner and ran into the same problem. Of the few packages I've looked at, they all work very well, and I can make a nifty DVD with an animated menu with a few mouse clicks and drag-n-drop, but I'd be interested in hearing about tools that provide a lot more power and flexibility, specifically as regards menu creation.
Adobe Encore is going to change that one, not quite as simple as DVD Studio Pro on Mac I don't think though I've never used that one. But it offers all the power you could imagine. You can get it bundled with Adobe Premiere Pro, and Adobe Audtion (formerly CoolEdit Pro), with a nice firewire card that includes analog to DV bridging for input and output for about $500. Beat that MAC people :P
With MOL (mac on linux) you can run imove and idvd it works great and it runs in linux! It doesn't run on X86 though, LOL and you still need to buy a mac to use OS X (legally)
Of course menus aren't part of movies. Although they are part of DVDs, and many people like to get full use of their products.
Also, how do menus degrade the quality of the movie? If anything they often provide a nice organized structure for configuring how you want to watch the DVD(subtitles, foreign lang., director's commentary, extra scenes, etc.) and an organized way of going through the extra content(deleted scenes, background information, commentary, etc.)
No, I'm not kidding. It plugs into anything in the house that makes video, does almost frame-accurate editing, 80GB HDD and stores to either -R or -RAM discs. Never drops frames, asks for software updates, gets the audio out of sync with the video, and the discs play on anything that will play -R media.
I have a DVD-R in my PC as well, and I know I'm probably a total loser but I found that video editing on the computer was more of a PITA than it was worth. DV bridge, hundreds of dollars worth of software, and a shitload of time to do compression or transcoding. The PC drive mainly comes in handy for duping DVDs I made on the E80 (DVD Decrypter) or making backups of stuff I've bought (DVDShrink).
For $480 I got a DMR-E80 and spent the rest of my time doing something more productive. I know it's not the right answer for someone who HAS to do 'fancy' editing (TV or Movies), but for most anything else it's sooo much easier and reliable, and less money to boot.
First off, I'm a video editor, and yes i use macs all day. yes, DVD studio is the best thing since sliced bread. and no, that doesn't answer the question. The best PC program I've found for DVD authoring is Adobe's Encore. At $550, its not free, but you get what you pay for with AV stuff.
Mod point free since 2001
Personally, I think that there is no substitute for Adobe Encore. Sonic Foundry Dvd Architect (i think it's owned by sony now) comes as a somewhat distant second. It is $599, but easily worth the money.
Hey, I thought I'd seen your advice somewhere before...hmmmm ;) DVD Shrink is useless if you want custom menus. It's used for taking an original DVD and removing/compressing items already on the DVD, not for mixing in new stuff. But it is a good program.
I just wanted to mention that most inexpensive, consumer-level or free programs do not support Dolby Digital audio compression. This is important if you want to have very high video quality on a disc which is longer than one hour.
g _e ncoder.htm
If you use uncompressed audio, your video bitrate has to be lowered and this will start to affect the quality. With Dolby Digital (2 channel) the audio size is significantly reduced, allowing you to set the video bitrate higher.
Adobe Encore, DVDit! Professional Edition, and DVD Studio Pro 2 all support Dolby Digital. DVD Studio Pro 2 even apparently does 5.1!
I have used Adobe Premiere for video editing and Adobe Encore for DVD authoring. Premiere is excellent, Encore is only at version 1.1 and still has some bugs.
BTW, a handy chart for selecting an appropriate bitrate for your video can be found at:
http://www.video2stream.com/using_the_adobe_mpe
Aha! Awesome to hear from you. I've used dvdauthor under Mac OS X (yes kids, recent versions compile just fine) but I've observed some weird artifacts at the same time.
... I mean, isn't it simply a mechanism for playing MPEG-2 streams? If so, why should commercial authoring software be able to create discs that traverse chapter stops with no problem, but dvdauthor-authored movies have trouble?
May as well own up to what I'm doing: I suck a bunch of chapters off a commercial DVD, filtered through a DeCSS algorithm. Then I ran all the resulting VOB files through dvdauthor, to create a disc image with no menus.
The artifacts I mention are in the chapter stops. Sometimes there's a very brief pause as my player goes from chapter to chapter, and fast forward and rewind behave really crazy.
I'm not so much asking when you're going to fix that, though (in fact, I think it's already been fixed) -- I'm just wondering about the DVD format itself. How complicated is it?? How can things like this show up
I'm just really curious about this format and why there should be so many hurdles in creating DVDs with open source software (since after all, unlike CD audio, a data DVD uses the same filesystem as a movie DVD).
Go to my Web site and grab my email address if you're willing to talk about it in private.
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I found this link by Ross Bernheim when I acquired my DVD-RW:t o-dvd.html
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Apps/AV/consumer-video-
Also, I was also looking into LVE as an editor. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks promising.
http://lvempeg.sourceforge.net
The specification isn't THAT complicated, true but the array of media formats one might want to import as assets can be dizzying. Additonally its takes some know-how in the program for how to properly convert assets into your MPEG-2 streams. Scripting can become complex too. If you want to deal with 16:9 verse 4:3 can be a PITA depending on what format something was shot in, etc.
As far DVD author being a specialist it also depends on how much of the input workflow you have control over. Myself I usually end up dealing with importing the video onto our edit stations and then at that point it becomes a quest for tweaking the MPEG-2 encoder settings right for the various segments that will go onto the DVD.
I do use both...but, I find more and more, as I get used to the commandline tools I use more and more..I can do things MUCH faster command line than I could GUI. I find many times, I use the GUI just to have a number of XTerms up at the same time...and so easy to cut and paste between the (highlight with mouse, middle click to paste it)...
I do a lot of database work...and I've grown so impressed with how powerful command line and the ability to pipe the commands together are....I get some pretty crappy data people throw together in excel files...I dump them to a CSV field...and with tools like sed and awk..sometimes perl...I can do quick and dirty manipulations to clean the data (get rid of stupid CR/LF's in text fields)...and get the data in a form to load into Oracle or whatever db.
So...like anything, it takes a little effort, yes..but, the rewards are there. It is analagous of when I started on windows....just using a mouse for everything...then, someone showed me keyboard shortcuts...that helped me start flying through work. The CLI of Linux/Unix is like that type revelation, except it exceeds that one by about 4 levels of magnitude.
So...just a matter of learning a new paradigm. No one is forcing anyone to use Linux over windows...if someone is so inclined to switch...they need to have the will to learn. If someone STARTS out doing more CLI and using a Linux environment...then, it is really no harder to learn that MS stuff...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........