How to: Make DVDs in Linux

[adam22]

I couldn't figure out how to do this, and some stuff on the web was confusing. With a little research and some help from Duane, I've come up with a pretty easy guide to do this. I used Ubuntu, but obviously this will work for other distros. I'm sure everyone here knows this stuff, but maybe it will be of use to someone someday.

 

1. Download DeVeDe. This program will allow you to take a movie in .avi or .mp4 format, and turn it into a .iso that you can burn to a disc and watch in any DVD player.

A. Open DeVeDe and click Video DVD

B. On the left you will see Titles. Keep Title 1 hilighted and click Properties. Change the title to your liking.

C. Change the default format to NTSC if appropriate. This chart will help you decide which format to use.

D. We can change the menu to our liking as well. On the bottom right, you will see Menu Options. Click this, and a new window should pop up. Here, you can change the background image of the menu. I recommend using PNG format for a picture here, for optimal quality. You can also select an mp3 for the background as well. Just hit the file browser button and select one. You can also change the alignment, color, and text, as well as preview the menu.

E. If you have a multicore processor, you're in luck. Click Advanced Options and then check Use optimizations for multicore CPUs. There are some other things you can play around with here as well.

F. At the top, under the file for the movie, select Properties and a new window will appear. Here you can select which here is where you can select which .avi to rip, if you have more than one to choose from. You can also play with aspect ratio and quality settings, but for the most part, default will suffice.

G. On the main window, click Forward. Rename your movie to "Title DVD" for convenience and select the location to save. The .iso will be inside the folder. I would recommend plugging your laptop in if you're using one, and closing out of any other unnecessary programs to decrease the time involved here. It takes me about an hour and 15 minutes to do this, but times will vary based on your CPU.

 

2. It's time to burn the movie. I recommend using K3b. If you don't have that already, go ahead and grab it from the repository. Insert a blank DVD-R or DVD-RW and open K3b. Click File>New Project>New Video DVD. There are various settings with this program that you can tinker with, but I pretty much leave everything at default. Simply choose your .iso from the browser on the left and then add it to the project, or burn the image directly. This should only take ten or fifteen minutes. When it is done, there will be a short noise and the disc will eject.

 

3. Put it in your DVD player and enjoy.

Edited January 30, 2010 by adam22

[JackeL]

nice guide adam....thats how i've been doing it for a few years now. one thing....

 

in step "f" you said: "Here you can select which audio track to rip"

 

i think you meant: here is where you can select which .avi

 

besides that....looks good!

 

btw, i have found that an average 700mb .avi turns into approx. a 2.0-2.2gb .iso, so if using an ordinary 4.7gb blank dvd....you should be able to fit 2 movies onto one disc.

 

also, on the main window of devede, after you have finished all your adjustments, but before you click the "forward" button....check the "adjust disk usage". if it is over 100%, then click the adjust disc usage button and it should bring it down to 99%. i believe you need to keep it under 100 for quality purposes.

 

[duanester]

yes jackel, .avi is a compressed format and encoding it decompresses it, in some cases it depends on the app that compressed the video, the quality can be stripped and will affectively remove almost a gig of video data.

 

so it depends on the applications settings, if it's compressed down to 1.3 gigs' then when uncompressed it should be about 3.8 gigs of data, that's norm because the rest of a 4.7 gig dvd is special features, languages, subs etc...........

 

side note: i would suggest you guys look into more modern video compression like mp4 'mpeg4'

[adam22]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I updated my post, sorry about my mistake.

 

Off to work now...back around 630