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...
- Convert the DivX files to mpeg2, the format used in DVDs:
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.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 - If you don't want to add subtitles, go to the next step. To add subtitles (in any format compatible with Mplayer):
- We have to create a file called subtitle.xml with the following contents:
Notice that 25 is the fps of a PAL video, and that 720x576 is the resolution of a PAL 16x9 DVD.<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> - Type this instruction in the Terminal to add the subtitles: spumux -s0 subtitle.xml > movie1.mpg > movie1sub.mpg.
- We have to create a file called subtitle.xml with the following contents:
- Author the DVD:
- Create a folder called DVD"
- Prepare a new file called dvdauthor.xml with the following contents:
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.<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> - Prepare the file structure of the DVD with the command: dvdauthor -x dvdauthor.xml
- Create a folder called DVD"
- Next, we should create the DVD image (dvd.iso): mkisofs -dvd-video -V Title -o dvd.iso DVD. Finally, we then burn the DVD. You could use a command line command like cdrecord, but I prefer to use Burn or LiquidCD to do this task. I like to check twice that I am not deleting the wrong rewritable DVD.
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.
Probably a better bash or AppleScript file could be created to automate the authoring task, but I leave this to the readers ;-). If anybody is interested, I think that this hint works on a Linux box, too. To prepare this hint, I used these tutorials: [robg adds: I haven't tested this one...]

