Recently we looked at how to join multiple avi or mpg files together. Now let’s look at how to get these files onto a DVD so you can bring it to your friend’s house and impress them with just how geeky you are, you Ubuntu fiend you.
To do this, you’ll need a neat little tool called tovid (pronounced Too Vid).
First, go here and make sure that you have all of the dependencies required. This is easier than it sounds. Simply open Synaptic and do a search for each dependency. You’ll want to get all of the core and all of the recommended.
Now that you have all that, go here and download the Tovid .deb file made especially for Ubuntu.
You can download this to your desktop, and simply double click on it to start the install process. Read on once this is installed, because we’re going to journey into command line interface (CLI) land.
The Ubuntu Forums have an excellent guide to using tovid’s GUI here however you’ll find you have a bunch more flexibility using CLI.
Going back to our previous example, say you have all of the Bloodspell files (all 7 of them) and you want to convert the .avi files into something usable for building a DVD and then make the DVD. Some popcorn and a soda would be nice too, but Linux can’t make everything.
First, let’s create a folder on your desktop, called “build-dvd” and another called “burn-dvd”.
Move the Bloodspell .avi files into the build-dvd directory. Rename them to something short, like b1.avi – b7.avi. Then open up a terminal session and type the following:
cd Desktop/build-dvd
Now you’re in the folder with the .avi files. Let’s convert them to a usable .mpg format.
tovid -in b1.avi -out bloodspell_1
This can take a little bit of time, so go get a cup of joe or a nice spot of tea. When this process finishes, repeat it for all the files you want to convert. For sanities sake in this guide, we’ll do just two of the Bloodspell episodes.
If you’ve decided to read ahead a bit, good for you! Let’s make the dvd menu while we’re waiting for those files to be converted.
Move into the burn-dvd folder:
cd ~/Desktop/burn-dvd
Now that you’re here, enter in the following command:
makemenu “Bloodspell Episode 1″ “Bloodspell Episode 2″ -out bsdvd
This command uses the makemenu script to create a menue with the two entries in quotes, and then tells it what file to output too. When finished you should have a bsdvd.mpg file in your burn-dvd directory.
Now we really have to wait until tovid has generated our .mpg files fom the .avi files. Once this is done, read on.
Got the files? Good, move them into the burn-dvd folder:
cp blood*.mpg ../burn-dvd/
Now you should have your two bloodspell .mpgs and the menu in the burn-dvd folder.
Now let’s create the structure of the disk. The script we’ll use to actually burn the dvd automates a whole bunch of things, but it needs a .xml file to tell it what to do. Don’t know XML? Well good thing you’re reading this! We’ll use the makexml script to do it for us. Ready?
makexml -menu bsdvd.mpg bloodspell_1 mpg bloodspell_2.mpg -out BloodSpell
The first mpg file is the menu we created earlier. The next two mpg files are the bulk of the DVD and the last bit, “BloodSpell†will be the name of the .xml file this script will generate.
Got it? Good. Now let’s burn the silly thing.
makedvd -burn BloodSpell.xml
Make sure you have a blank DVD in the drive while you do this.
There are lots of other options available as well, such as including an audio track and animated menus and whatnot. You can use man makemenu for more info (same goes for the other scripts) or go here
for all of the man pages online. This tutorial is just to get you started.
Hope you found it helpful!
geek out.
Technorati Tags: linux, ubuntu, dvd, burn dvd, burn dvd in linux, tovid, avi, mpg
Popularity: 12% [?]
January 30th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Note, if you’re having trouble with Tovid under Edgy (Syntax error 299 or some such thing) see this article for the fix.
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=183936&page=22
February 20th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
This was really helpful. Thanks! There’s a small typo: the command “makexlml” in the instructions should be “makexml.” I think most people would figure that out pretty quickly on there own, but I just thought I would let you know.
February 20th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Small typo in my previous post: should be “their” instead of “there.”
February 20th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Ack. Thanks Doug for pointing that out. Got it fixed now!
March 31st, 2007 at 5:29 am
Hi Great Post… I think I almost got it…. After entering the burn command it went through a process and I got this:
Please insert a blank DVD+/-R(W) disc into your DVD-recorder
(/dev/dvdrw) if you have not already done so.
Couldn’t find /dev/dvdrw! Are you sure your burner is /dev/dvdrw? Specify your
burner with ‘-device /path/to/burner’.
Stopping here.
My dvd is on dev/hdc
any help would be appreciate.
Rob
April 2nd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Ok I found the answer for me anyway…..
the following is what I typed in where the xoxoxo is the name of the .xml file and of course meg would be replaced with the name of your place. I did try to be in the burn-dvd directory but it did not work until I typed in the actual path. Hope this helps someone else through the frustration
makedvd -burn -device /dev/hdc /home/meg/Desktop/burn-dvd/xoxoxo.xml
July 31st, 2007 at 7:05 am
Thanks for this tovid HOW-TO. The ‘Feisty’ tovid GUI still needs work, but this article set me on the correct path; so I dump the GUI and just go with the CLI.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Every time I try to burn a DVD to view on my TV, my DVD reader tells me “DISC ERROR”. I was successful once or twice few years ago, so I know the DVD reader shouldn’t be a problem. It is a Toshiba SD-2800 that was purchased in Canada.
The DVD I burned by following your steps work wonderfully with Ubuntu: I insert the disk in the drive and it starts playing. Just like half a dozen other discs however, it refuses to play on my Toshiba.
Here are the steps I followed and the output it produced, possibly showing out what may be wrong? The only thing I notice is the small file size (about 400 MB for a 1:39 movie).
$ tovid -dvd -ntsc -in Why.We.Suck.avi -out Why.We.Suck
——————————–
tovid
DVD and (S)VCD video conversion script
Version svn-r2319
http://www.tovid.org
——————————–
Using config file .tovid/tovid.config, containing the following options:
(none)
tovid command-line used:
-dvd -ntsc -in Why.We.Suck.avi -out Why.We.Suck
Changing to working directory: .
Converting Why.We.Suck.avi to NTSC DVD format
Encoding quality is 6 of 10 (use -quality to change)
Saving to Why.We.Suck.mpg
Storing log and temporary files in Why.We.Suck.0
Run ‘tail -f “Why.We.Suck.0/tovid.log”‘ in another terminal to monitor the log
=========================================================
Probing video for information. This may take several minutes…
The encoding process is estimated to require 4160 MB of disk space.
You currently have 84386 MB available in this directory.
Analysis of file Why.We.Suck.avi:
720 x 416 pixels, 29.970 fps
Duration (best guess): 01:39:04 (HH:MM:SS)
DX50 video with ac3 audio
=========================================================
Audio stream is already compliant with NTSC DVD.
No re-encoding is necessary. To force encoding, use -force
=========================================================
Target format:
720 x 480 pixels, 29.970 fps
m2v video with ac3 audio
5400 kbits/sec video, 224 kbits/sec audio
=========================================================
Using auto-detected aspect ratio 173:100 (override with -aspect)
Letterboxing vertically
Input is already 29.970 fps. Framerate will not be altered.
Scaling picture to 720 x 384
Centering picture against a 720 x 480 black background
=========================================================
Found compliant audio and dumping the stream.
This sometimes causes errors when multiplexing; add ‘-force’ to the tovid
command line to re-encode if multiplexing fails.
Copying the existing audio stream with the following command:
nice -n 0 ffmpeg -i Why.We.Suck.avi -vn -acodec copy Why.We.Suck.0/audio.ac3
Processing started. Please wait…
— Copying compliant audio stream: 318 MB written to audio.ac3
=========================================================
mkfifo: ne peut créer le fifo `Why.We.Suck.0/video.yuv’: Opération non permise
Encoding video stream with the following commands:
nice -n 0 mplayer -noconsolecontrols -benchmark -nosound -noframedrop -noautosub -vo yuv4mpeg:file=”Why.We.Suck.0/video.yuv” -vf scale=720:384,expand=720:480 “Why.We.Suck.avi”
cat “Why.We.Suck.0/video.yuv” | nice -n 0 mpeg2enc –sequence-length 4300 –nonvideo-bitrate 280 –aspect 2 -f 8 -b 5400 -g 4 -G 11 -D 10 -K hi-res –frame-rate 4 -v 0 –video-norm n –reduction-4×4 2 –reduction-2×2 1 -q 7 -o “Why.We.Suck.0/video.m2v”
Processing started. Please wait…
— Ripping raw uncompressed video stream: 4096 MB written to video.yuv
Processing started. Please wait…
||| Encoding video stream: 73 MB written to video.m2v
=========================================================
Multiplexing audio and video together with the following command:
mplex -V -f 8 -o Why.We.Suck.mpg Why.We.Suck.0/video.m2v Why.We.Suck.0/audio.ac3
Multiplexing finished successfully
Output files:
399M Why.We.Suck.mpg
399M total
=========================================================
—————————————-
Final statistics
—————-
tovid svn-r2319
File: Why.We.Suck.mpg, 5944 secs DVD NTSC
Final size: 407648 kilobytes
Target bitrate: 5400 kbits/sec
Average bitrate: 2200 kbits/sec
Peak bitrate: 5460 kbits/sec
Took 00:11:05 to encode on AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3000+ 2104.808 mhz
—————————————–
Statistics written to .tovid/stats.tovid
$ makemenu “Why We Suck” -out bsdvd
$ makexml -menu bsdvd.mpg Why.We.Suck.mpg -out WhyWeSuck
$ makedvd “WhyWeSuck.xml”
——————————–
makedvd
A script to create a DVD-Video file structure and burn it to DVD
Part of the tovid suite, version svn-r2319
http://www.tovid.org
——————————–
Authoring disc from file: build-dvd/WhyWeSuck.xml
Putting output in ./WhyWeSuck/
=========================================================
Authoring DVD-Video disc structure, estimated to require 400MB.
Creating disc structure with the following command:
dvdauthor -x “build-dvd/WhyWeSuck.xml”
=========================================================
DVDAuthor::dvdauthor, version 0.6.14.
Build options: gnugetopt magick iconv freetype
Send bugs to
INFO: Locale=fr_FR.UTF-8
INFO: Converting filenames to UTF-8
INFO: dvdauthor creating VTS
STAT: Picking VTS 01
STAT: Processing bsdvd.mpg…
INFO: Video pts = 0.178 .. 4.148
INFO: Audio[0] pts = 0.178 .. 4.178
INFO: Audio[32] pts = 0.178 .. 0.178
STAT: VOBU 7 at 0MB, 1 PGCS
INFO: Generating VTSM with the following video attributes:
INFO: MPEG version: mpeg2
INFO: TV standard: ntsc
INFO: Aspect ratio: 4:3
INFO: Resolution: 720×480
INFO: Audio ch 0 format: ac3/2ch, 48khz drc
STAT: Processing Why.We.Suck.mpg…
STAT: VOBU 752 at 90MB, 1 PGCS
INFO: Video pts = 0.178 .. 276.587
INFO: Audio[0] pts = 0.178 .. 5944.370
STAT: VOBU 754 at 398MB, 1 PGCS
INFO: Generating VTS with the following video attributes:
INFO: MPEG version: mpeg2
INFO: TV standard: ntsc
INFO: Aspect ratio: 4:3
INFO: Resolution: 720×480
INFO: Audio ch 0 format: ac3/6ch, 48khz drc
STAT: fixed 7 VOBUS
STAT: fixed 754 VOBUS
INFO: dvdauthor creating table of contents
INFO: Scanning WhyWeSuck/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.IFO
$ makedvd -burn “WhyWeSuck”
June 19th, 2008 at 4:49 am
i did what robert said on post #11… it finally quit giving me errors and now i see my external dvd on my dell latitude D410 actually light up… maybe its working?
i’ll know when my nephew goes to watch this kung-fu panda flic on his not-so-codec friendly dvd player… thanks robert
March 30th, 2009 at 7:18 am
I know a Mac DVD Creator,which is the perfect solution for Mac computer users to burn videos including AVI, MOV, FLV(YouTube video, Google video,etc), TS, TP, TRP, MP4, MPG, MPEG, VOB, 3GP, and DAT to video DVDs. It has very high output quality and provides users with a customizable DVD menu.
http://apple-idvd.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-burn-video-to-dvd-on-mac.html
December 10th, 2009 at 3:57 am
How to burn dvd?here is an answer.
April 23rd, 2010 at 2:12 pm
hmm, that seems to be not true. I will get back tomorrow and extend my comment. Hope it will help.
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May 12th, 2010 at 7:22 am
thank you ,it is helpfull to me
June 30th, 2010 at 6:02 am
Burning a DVD under Linux it is hard, but the hardest part it is burning a DVD for your DVD player using a standard format.
July 6th, 2010 at 6:09 am
Great, I like it.It’s uesful.
July 6th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
Hi all,
Bit of a Linux nub here,
I seem to be having some difficulties I have had no problem until I get to the line
makemenu “Bloodspell Episode 1? “Bloodspell Episode 2? -out bsdvd
In my case I’m trying to burn 3 files they’re named “thepacific_1″ “thepacific_2″ “thepacific_3″ so my text looks like this
makemenu “thepacific_1″ “thepacific_2″ “thepacific_3″ -out bsdvd
and it keeps telling me that the command is not found. Has anyone encountered this or do you see a problem with my line? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
August 6th, 2010 at 9:16 am
Thank you very much ,it is helpfull to me
August 23rd, 2010 at 5:37 am
prankstah and arsgeek,
Just to clarify your problem and to let the OP know that the new version of Tovid has changed its commands makemenu is just menu, makexml is just xml and so on. Dont forget to add tovid in front of the command.
eg: john@john:~$ tovid menu “Bloodspell Episode 1? “Bloodspell Episode 2? -out bsdvd
Great tutorial, works great
Thanks heaps,
John
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November 4th, 2010 at 3:20 am
In 2006 it was quiet problematic to burn a DVD in ubuntu, nowadays you don’t need any more to mount the DVD drive, just drag and drop.
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