[TriLUG] VHS Tapes, Digital Video Cameras and DVD Recorders

Bob Shepherd rwshep2000 at yahoo.com
Tue Jun 15 09:03:18 EDT 2004


I have no experience with this, but my friend who uses Linux a lot to make 
DVDs wrote this:

<snip>

If Dad isn't interested in DVD menus, then this is all actually quite simple:

* Use Kino to transfer the video tapes via firewire from the camcorder into 
the PC.
* Export from Kino in MPEG-2 format (undoubtably the longest part of this 
process: 3 - 4 hours per hour of video)
* Use dvdauthor to create a single playlist DVD filesystem
* Use mkisofs to create an ISO image of the DVD
* Use growfs to put that iso onto the blank DVD

Now, if you want to get into menus and fancy stuff, it gets a lot harder. 
  Useful links:
http://polidori.sourceforge.net/
http://qdvdauthor.sourceforge.net/
http://dvdstyler.sourceforge.net/

No experience with any of those.

Of course, the long-term upshot for everyone except Dad is that you can do 
some amazingly cool stuff with all this command-line junk, as long as 
you have patience:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=8639690

As always, one tool does one task well, and lots of "glue" applications 
pop up to fill out the user space left vacant with that tool:
http://dvd-slideshow.sourceforge.net/

And lots of user-created doco:
http://gecius.de/linux/dvd.html
http://www.pcxperience.org/james/dvd/
http://www.tappin.me.uk/Linux/dvd.html

Menus are the hardest bits for me, still.

</snip>

On Monday 14 June 2004 4:04 pm, Jeff Tickle wrote:
> *gasp* :-O HOLY CRAP.
>
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=117709
>
> Yes, this is definitely the traditional Linux way of doing things, for
> sure!
>
> I've been looking for a good project to learn GTK with.  Looks like I've
> found it!
>
> Anyone interested in a nice graphical front-end to bring all these
> instructions together?  I mean I don't mind doing it this way, but Dad
> will certainly feel different.  So I guess I'll make something to handle
> the graphical end of DVD authoring, unless someone knows of a project
> already started that I can get in on or something, but you're right,
> there's not much out there in this area.
>
> -Jeff
>
> On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 12:51, Michael Thompson wrote:
> > Not sure how easy/hard it is to get the data from the vcr to the
> > computer, but I do know that the dvdauthor software I found to try and
> > arrange my mpegs on the dvd with menus, etc, was *not* easy.  Basically,
> > you have to create an XML file with all the menus and movie files laid
> > out how you want them, then it creates a DVD iso.  After a few hours of
> > playing with it, still had no success.  Apparently, its not as easy as
> > "just putting the files in a VIDEO_TS directory and burning".
> >
> > A google search on "dvdauthor" will probably bring up some information,
> > but if you're looking for something "point and click" (brings us back to
> > usability issues again?) then you're probably better of using one of the
> > <sigh> "other" OSes...
> >
> > BTW, I was hoping that my new PowerBook (which came with iDVD) would
> > allow me to author my DVDs into ISO files which I could burn on my linux
> > PC, but apparently it requires a hack that is *not* allowed under the
> > DMCA as my PowerBook did not come with the DVD burner built in.  So, if
> > you buy a Mac hoping to put your home videos on DVD, pay the extra $200
> > for the DVD burner.
> >
> > --mike
> >
> > On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 08:27, Jeff Tickle wrote:
> > > Howdy..
> > >
> > > My Dad wants to start a fun little conversion project.  He has a bunch
> > > of VHS tapes that he'd like to convert to DVDs, plus some stuff he's
> > > recorded on a digital video camera (not sure of the model... so we'll
> > > just assume it works with Linux until I find out otherwise.)
> > >
> > > Does anyone have experience doing this with Linux?  One thing I'm going
> > > to have to do is make the entire process as easy as possible.  I
> > > haven't done much research yet but I just wanted to get word from any
> > > of your experiences.  The two things I have absolutely no clue how to
> > > do are take the video from the camera and write video to a DVD.
> > >
> > > -Jeff
> > >
> > > --
> > > Jeff Tickle <jtickle at jtsoft.net>
> > > JTSoft.net
>
> --
> Jeff Tickle <jtickle at jtsoft.net>
> JTSoft.net




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