In the evening I wanted to convert a single AVI file to something I could burn on a DVD so it could be played back on a standalone DVD player. I had already learned how to burn VOB, BUP, and IFO to DVD on Ubuntu but had no idea yet how to convert an AVI file to those required files on a GNU/Linux operating system.
So I searched the Ubuntu community documentation using a smart keyword in Firefox I had created sometime ago, and found documentation on Tovid:
Tovid is a collection of video disc authoring tools. With Tovid, you can create DVDs and other video discs.
I installed the tovid collection via the command line as follows:
sudo apt-get install tovid
The Tovid
documentation mentiones that it's required to
enable
Multiverse. Since the apt-get
install worked for me without any problems
I guess I had already done so in the past,
probably when I installed VLC media player.
After the successful installation I converted the
AVI to (S)VCD/DVD-complaint MPEG format - suitable
for burning to CD/DVD-R for playback on a
standalone DVD player - at the command line using
tovid as follows:
tovid -in example.avi -out example
With example.avi the name of the AVI
file, and example the desired output
name. Note that the extension mpg is
automatically added to the output file, which I
forgot, so I ended up with a file named
example.mpg.mpg. However, this is not
a real issue and it can be fixed with using:
mv example.mpg.mpg example.mpg
The television standard tovid uses defaults to
NTSC and the format defaults to DVD; both correct
in my case as I am living in Mexico and I wanted a
DVD. Check man tovid for a full list
of options.
Next I used the todisc command-line
script to create a DVD file-system with an
animated thumbnail menu. Since I had only one video
I used:
todisc -files example.mpg -titles "Example Title" -out result
to create a simple menu with a title for the
video, and to write the DVD file-system to a
directory named result.
If you have more than one file converted with
tovid, list them after the
-files option and follow the
-titles option with a title for each
video between double quotes.
After the todisc program had finished
I checked the result directory with
the ls -R command:
ls -R result
result:
AUDIO_TS VIDEO_TS
result/AUDIO_TS:
result/VIDEO_TS:
VIDEO_TS.BUP VIDEO_TS.VOB VTS_01_0.IFO VTS_01_1.VOB
VIDEO_TS.IFO VTS_01_0.BUP VTS_01_0.VOB VTS_01_2.VOB
The file VTS_01_0.VOB when opened in VLC media
player showed me the menu that was automatically
created by the todisc command-line
script: a rectangle with inside at the top the
title I had specified, below the title an animation
consisting of fragments out of the video, and below
the rectangle the text "My Video Collection" - note
that the latter can be changed with the option
-menu-title. Since for now I was
satisfied with the generated menu I decided to
convert the DVD file-system to an ISO image.
Note that todisc has a lot of options
to explore, see man todisc for a full list.
Since it was unclear to me from the Tovid documentation how to proceed; the section "Todisc Script" is followed by "Creating a Video Disc" which starts with
After Tovid has finished
Will finish this one soon, see: Burning VOB, BUP, and IFO to DVD on Ubuntu on how to convert the DVD-filesystem to an ISO image and burn the ISO image to an actual DVD.