For quite some time, the main bulk of my media files have been stored on a networked file server. It gives me ultimate flexibility in terms of how and where I access them: remotely (via ssh) or across the home network to any of a number of devices. Every now and then, however, I need to return them to DVD for playing on a conventional DVD player. It’s really easy to do at the shell (command line).
1. Get the bits of software you’ll need
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg dvdauthor growisofs
2. Convert the avi to a DVD-friendly MPEG2 (it’ll probably be huge in comparison to your avi, so be careful!)
ffmpeg -i my_favourite_xvid.avi -target pal-dvd my_favourite_xvid.mpg
NB. I’m in Australia, so we use PAL-formatted DVD. You could use ‘dvd’ instead of ‘pal-dvd’ if you want NTSC. ffmpeg is a very powerful application – check out the manpage for more.
3. Set up some chapter information.
dvdauthor uses a very simple xml format. You can get away with a very minimal setup like this
…and get it ready with dvdauthor
dvdauthor -x my_favourite_vid.xml
4. Burn it to a DVD
That previous example sticks the VOBs etc in a folder called DVD. Assuming that your dvd burner is at /dev/dvd (it probably is)…
growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -dvd-video DVD/
… and it’s good to go!