Make standard DVD from .avi file?? How?

[greengeek]

I have an avi file which i would like to watch on a standard DVD player.

Many online tutorials refer to a utility called Devede as the first step to re-formatting an avi file ready for use copying to a DVD - and then refer to Brasero or similar to "author" the converted file to an actual DVD.

What options are available on normal puppies? (eg Slacko 5.6, or Tahr32, or xenial 64 or bionicpup64 etc)

I would imagine ffconvert to change avi to some other format, then pdvdrsab or pburn for the rest - but would appreciate clarity around what others have found to work. Have already burnt a couple of disks without success so there must be a right way to do this.... but i just dont know it and don't want to reinvent the wheel at 50c per DVD
TIA !

Solutions:

- To make a very simple DVD just use pBurn and select "Burn Video". Then right click the appropriate file in the selection window and click the burn icon. (select pal or ntsc as reqd). pBurn will convert the file as necessary, then burn it.

- More complex DVD structures (larger files, more files, menus, chapters etc) require more sophisticated tools which are beyond the scope of my needs at present but i will try to highlight these solutions as they are offered in the thread:

taersh has provided a DVD-Styler sfs for Bionic64 here
viewtopic.php?p=26146#p26146

[mikewalsh]

@greengeek :-

Ian:-

Coupla threads here may be useful:-

https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=53499

https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=116449

I also remember I detailed the entire process using pBurn somewhere on the old forum - a mate wanted a bunch of old cowboy films on DVD - but I'm hanged if I can track it down ATM..... Mostly revolves around the creation of things called video_ts/.vob files, so it seems.

I think I used pdvdrsab to "author" the movie into a .vob file-system, followed by then using pBurn itself to actually burn to disc.

I'll keep looking. Hope those links help.

Mike.

[norgo]

@greengeek

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

infile="input.avi"
outfile="pal_output.mpg"

ffmpeg -i $infile \
		-f dvd \
		-vcodec mpeg2video \
		-b:v 6000k \
		-minrate 0k \
		-maxrate 8000k \
		-bufsize 1835k \
		-r 25 \
		-mbd rd \
		-trellis 1 \
		-mpv_flags +mv0 \
		-cmp 0 \
		-subcmp 2 \
		-vf [in]pad="iw:iw*3/4:0:((iw*3/4)-ih)/2",scale="720:576"[out] \
		-aspect 4:3 \
		-acodec mp2 \
		-b:a 128k \
		-ar 48000 \
		-ac 2 \
		$outfile

same topic of the old forum here

hey @mikewalsh you are really fast

[mikewalsh]

@norgo :-

While I think about it - and while I've got you here! - may I pick your brains about Nero, mate?

Both Nero4Linux and NeroExpess will fire-up fine in my Pups; GUI showing & working fine. However; it point-blank refuses to "see" either of my DVD-combo drives..!

One is the built-in one that came with this new HP mid-tower (a horrible, vertical-mounted cheap'n'nasty laptop-style thing; it DOES work OK, though). The other is the almost brand-new tray-loader I bought as a replacement for the old Compaq's optical drive, literally just weeks before it snuffed it. I rescued it, along with a few other bits, before consigning the Compaq to the tip; bought a USB 3.0-to-SATA adapter (with the correct chipset!), and run it now as a 'portable' (it sits on top of the tower).

------------------------------------------

Would I be right in thinking this is something to do with the way Puppy 'mounts' optical drives? My two are designated as "sr0" and "sr1", respectively....but this is NOT how mainstream distros do things, is it? If I'm right, they do things as "dev_cd", "dev_cdrom", "dev_dvd".....stuff like that.

Can we sym-link anything in the /dev directory to work around this.....or is there another, simpler way to do it? Like editing a .config file..? I can't be the only one to have run up against this issue, of that I'm convinced....

I really used to enjoy using Nero back in my XP days, so I would like to get these working properly in Puppy, that's for sure.

Any advice would be very much appreciated..!!

Mike.

[norgo]

Both Nero4Linux and NeroExpess will fire-up fine in my Pups; GUI showing & working fine. However; it point-blank refuses to "see" either of my DVD-combo drives..!

make sure that kernel module sg is loaded

[taersh]

I have used DVD-Styler in Tahr. Should work with .avi files.

Edit:

DVD-Styler 3.1 in Bionic64:

Screenshot.jpg (110.4 KiB) Viewed 305 times

[taersh]

I created a .sfs module for Bionic64:
DVD-Styler 3.1, 64bit Bionic64

[rockedge]

I have done this with Devede on Bionicpup's but it needs a good python3 installation. Once devede was finished I used pburn to complete the DVD.

Getting the python3 to import gi is the hang up on devede and Bioinic64-9.0.5

[greengeek]

@mikewalsh
@norgo
@taersh

Hey thanks for all the suggestions and links. It seems that there is a lot of technicality to making a proper DVD with menus and I will do some trials to help me understand the overall process.

In the meantime those links suggested that pBurn on it's own can handle the basic work of transferring a video file to a simple DVD so that is what i have tried just now. It works great!

I even tried burning an .mkv file produced by SimplScreenRecorder - even though pBurn did not list it as a supported file - but it works perfectly.

Caveats:
- Need to have plenty of swap space to accomodate large file storage and conversion area.
- I only tried using a single file - although pBurn says it can handle multiple video files
- Apparently there is a 1GB limit to each vob file but i don't understand enough yet to know what this really means or how pBurn handles this when burning larger files. My file was a simple 29 minute video produced by SimpleScreenRecorder
- I did not try to create chapters or anything fancy yet. There's obviously lots more to learn.

I do think that there may possibly be some image edges missing on the final DVD but not sure yet if that is my TV aspect ratio setting, or original simplescreenrecorder rectangle selection, or something in the file conversion process. Not a huge issue at the moment because this is just a video to keep a two year old grandson entertained.

Probably this is where norgo's script may be a needed part of the process.

I tried norgo's script and it produced a video file that worked fine - i need to try this some more in order to understand when this will be needed - ie, input file aspect ratio versus ratio required for DVD.