There are a lot of ways to author a DVD, like iDVD or SmallDVD. They are quite powerful and require a lot of interaction from the user. But how could we author a DVD without using a GUI? The objective of this hint is create a simple DVD to view some DivX (or other formats) in a DVD player. I do not need fancy things, like menus. I just want a DVD like a VHS tape, one movie is after the other, but more comfortable to use because we can access the movies using the Chapter button on the DVD player's remote.
The best part of not using a GUI is that you just spend one minute preparing everything, and then there is no more interaction until the end of the proccess. I prepare my DVDs during the night. That is great because the Mac could need several hours to prepare the DVD. To use this hint, you must be comfortable using Terminal (only a little, you don't need to be an expert -- I am not) and installing applications using Fink.
First you should install DVDauthor and mkisofs, both available in Fink, and MPlayer.
After that, you should follow this protocol...
mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd
-vf scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts
vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:keyint=15:
aspect=16/9 -ofps 25 -o movie1.mpg movie1.avi
Note that these are the settings I use to prepare a PAL (not NTSC) 16x9 DVD. In case you wanted to prepare a different DVD, ie NTSC or 4x3, you could find the right setting for every situation on this page.<subpictures>
<stream>
<textsub filename="movie1.srt" characterset="ISO8859-1"
fontsize="18.0" font="Arial.ttf" horizontal-alignment="center"
vertical-alignment="bottom" left-margin="60" right-margin="60"
top-margin="20" bottom-margin="30" subtitle-fps="25"
movie-fps="25" movie-width="720" movie-height="576"/>
</stream>
</subpictures>
Notice that 25 is the fps of a PAL video, and that 720x576 is the resolution of a PAL 16x9 DVD.<dvdauthor dest="DVD">
<vmgm />
<titleset>
<titles>
<video format="pal" aspect="16:9" />
<pgc>
<vob file="Movie1sub.mpg"/>
<vob file="Movie2.mpg"/>
<vob file="Movie3sub.mpg" />
</pgc>
</titles>
</titleset>
</dvdauthor>
The DVD in this example has three movies. The first chapter will be Movie1, the second Movie2, and the third chapter will be Movie3. The first and the third one have subtitles.mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd
-vf scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000
-lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:
vbitrate=5000:keyint=15:aspect=16/9 -ofps 25 -o Movie1.mpg "movie 1.avi"
mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd -vf
scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts
vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:
keyint=15:aspect=16/9 -ofps 25 -o Movie2.mpg "movie 2.avi"
dvdauthor -x dvd.xml
mkisofs -dvd-video -V 24 -o dvd.iso DVD
Beware that the mencoder commands must each be in one long line. In this case, there were no subtitles added. Execute the file using ./DVDcode in the Terminal.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20061015103300777