AVI to DVD??

This may not be the exact answer, but there is a podcast on the LinuxReality site that covers an introduction to Kino.

http://www.linuxreality.com/2006/09/

Episode 31 is the one you'll want to download and listen to.

You'll need a swag of hard disk space to use Kino though because it has to convert the media file to a .dv format, which is raw video, or 120Gb per hour for an average recorder.

Mike P

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Life may not be the party we thought, but while we're here, we may as well dance.
Break M$'s shackles from your feet and free yourself with Mepis

Are you sure it's 120G per hour? I would think it would be more like 1.2G per hour but I have never used Kino so I don't know. I know on my MythTV box it's about 1.2G per hour.

Thanks Mike for your suggestion. I don't want to edit anything, though, (trying to keep it simple), just export some AVI files to a dvd so I can play them on a standalone player. Preferably using a GUI. Does anyone know if this is possible? Thanks again!

most dvd players can play avi files on a data dvd. Try it with a rewriteable

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

It does work, but on my Philips it is a bit jumpy. I don't know what other peoples' players do though.

Thanks for the tip Carlops but it didn't work on my player. Maybe I need to update it...

You can use ffmpeg and/or mencoder for cli and tovid for gui.

Here's a site to help you.

http://www.smorgasbord.net/convert_video_linux

http://tovid.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

Ah tovid.. I wrote a little bit on that a long time ago:

I convert my .rm and .avi files to Mpeg1 format because of the DVD player we have here, that way we can watch the downloaded streams on the TV. Before you can do this you will have to install Tovid. The following lines are applicable for the region that I live in. Check the Tovid homepage on what you need to put in the command line.

tovid -pal -vcd filename.rm filename
tovid -pal -vcd filename.avi filename

The extension .mpg will be automatically added after the filename.

Install and use DeVeDe

http://www.rastersoft.com/programas/devede.html

creates just about any kind of video dvd/cd
from just about any type of video file..

Use it daily no problems

burdicda

* kino is great for editing the file before you
DeVeDe it into a dvd

Yep, raw video files are huge and have no compression. I just tried a high quality 480x576 25fps 2m14s music video that was 54Mb and it grew to 582.1Mb when converted to a .dv file using kino as the preliminary step before it could be edited.

In the past, when I had a 60Gb hdd in my laptop, I had to give up on downloading the contents of a dv camera because after 15-20 minutes, I had only 10Gb of hard disk space left and I did not want to potentially lose my existing data by jamming the hard disk so full that it would not function.

As for the rest of this thread, I am going to try some of the other suggestions because they sound a little friendlier to my limited 120Gb hdd with only 30Gb remaining.

Mike P

--------------------
Life may not be the party we thought, but while we're here, we may as well dance.
Break M$'s shackles from your feet and free yourself with Mepis

Hello again and thanks for all comments. I downloaded devede and mplayer cos that seemed the simplest option. However... when I tried to install devede (as root) with ./install.sh nothing happened. Am I missing something?

Thanks again to all for helping, hopefully I'll be merrily writing dvds soon...

Ah! I managed to install Avidemux and DVDstyler... after much faffing about. I found a smashing tutorial too... here is the address if anyone is interested...

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/01/06/122323.php

Currently transcoding AVIs and crossing fingers...

Thanks again to all

Jim

Seems like I'm answering my own question here but with much detective work and trial and error I've managed to create a DVD with a menu that plays on the standalone player... through one speaker only, but it's a good leap forward.

Devede wouldn't work for me but Avidemux and DVDStyler did the trick. Anyone else planning to use these might do well to look at this link also cos the configuration needs a bit of tweaking:

http://www.pclinuxonline.com/wiki/CreatingVideoDVDCreate

Thumbs up!

As far as the installer is concerned, you're not missing anything, blink and it's done. On my system, I did it twice before running updatedb and searching for it then finding it under /usr/local/bin/devede but I can't speak for any missing dependencies on your system.

From the devs homepage;
"The big advantage over other utilites is that it only needs Mplayer, Mencoder, DVDAuthor, VCDImager and MKisofs (well, and Python 2.4, PyGTK and PyGlade), so its dependencies are really small"

Check in synaptic to see you have all the dependencies met and remember that titles like PyGTK and PyGLADE are covered with packages python2.4-glade2 and python2.4-gtk2. Having done that, check your K-Menu under Multimedia for a line
DVD/CD Video Creator (DeVeDe)

By the way, KDE has a minor bug where installed programs do not always immediately show up in the menu. To work around this, many have logged out and logged back in, but it's just as easy to run kmenuedit and without changing anything, click the floppy icon to save the changes and close the window. This refreshes the K-Menu.

By the way, you seem to be getting around the linux system quite well, so where did you come from?

Mike P

--------------------
Life may not be the party we thought, but while we're here, we may as well dance.
Break M$'s shackles from your feet and free yourself with Mepis

Hello Mike

Thanks for your reply. I'll have a look at it properly when I've had a break.

Where did I come from... well I've actually had Mepis installed for a couple of months or more, on my desktop, but I've been using my laptop (Windows) mostly, up until now. So I've been fiddling around, on and off, for a while. I like the OS and though I'm no programmer, using the command line and terminals and stuff is really interesting... I'm studying English and this is a great distraction.

Anyhow thanks again and will try your tips soon.

Cheers

Jim

Well after lots of fiddling around, installing various packages, writing numerous DVDs, I finally created one with a functioning menu using Avidemux and DVDStyler. Works a treat, great quality no problems with lip synching or anything.

One problem I did come across with the sound on Avidemux was finding the right audio codec to use. FFm AC3 was the one that worked for me in the end. Even the preview function using Kaffeine works now. All I need to do is film something worth watching...

Cheers Mepis and all for helping, looks like there's nothing I can't do with this OS. Rock on!

Jim