Video Conversion in Linux for DVD Creation
A friend of mine recently converted my 3 hour wedding video from VHS to AVI for me. I've trimmed what I could, but the remaining video is still two and one-half hours long. I have Googled for how to fit 2-1/2 hours of AVI video onto a 2 hour DVD. All I have been able to find is information on how to convert 85 minutes of AVI video into one conventional 4.7GB DVD, which isn't what I'm looking for. The mencoder documentation isn't much help either: it doesn't quite tell you which commands affect bitrates and how to set constant bitrates to control file size. What I'd really like would be something like an older Windows tool I used to use before switching to Linux. It was a MPEG encoder, but it also let me change a few things, such as set constant bitrates and the like. I could set a video file to be encoded at a constant bitrate, say 3000Kbps video and 192Kbps audio, and it would create a 3 hour video file small enough to fit on a regular DVD, but still compatible with the DVD format to make it into a regular video DVD. If there was a utility which created the command line command for mencoder, that would work nicely, but everything I've seen so far which does this doesn't let you reduce a file size to make lots of video fit on one DVD. Avidemux will convert the file to DVD MPEG2, but it only lets you choose a maximum bitrate and then uses bitrates anywhere from 1 to your maximum bitrate, which plays merry heck with the final file size and results in a much more reduced quality of the final video than if Avidemux had just used the "maximum bitrate" as a constant bitrate. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. http://travel.yahoo.com/
On Tuesday 14 August 2007, Leo Mauler wrote:
A friend of mine recently converted my 3 hour wedding video from VHS to AVI for me. I've trimmed what I could, but the remaining video is still two and one-half hours long.
Why are you doing VHS->"AVI"->MPEG-2? Unless your AVI is raw uncompressed video (hundreds of GB, IIRC), doing this is going to lose quite a significant bit of quality.
I have Googled for how to fit 2-1/2 hours of AVI video onto a 2 hour DVD. All I have been able to find is information on how to convert 85 minutes of AVI video into one conventional 4.7GB DVD, which isn't what I'm looking for.
For something so specific, you obviously just aren't going to find a step-by-step howto. You'll need to just take your numbers and calculate the bitrate you need manually.
The mencoder documentation isn't much help either: it doesn't quite tell you which commands affect bitrates and how to set constant bitrates to control file size.
vbitrate=<value> Specify bitrate (pass 1/2) (default: 800). Doesn't get much clearer than that...
On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 02:48:09PM +0000, Luke -Jr wrote:
On Tuesday 14 August 2007, Leo Mauler wrote:
A friend of mine recently converted my 3 hour wedding video from VHS to AVI for me. I've trimmed what I could, but the remaining video is still two and one-half hours long.
Why are you doing VHS->"AVI"->MPEG-2? Unless your AVI is raw uncompressed video (hundreds of GB, IIRC), doing this is going to lose quite a significant bit of quality.
I have Googled for how to fit 2-1/2 hours of AVI video onto a 2 hour DVD. All I have been able to find is information on how to convert 85 minutes of AVI video into one conventional 4.7GB DVD, which isn't what I'm looking for.
For something so specific, you obviously just aren't going to find a step-by-step howto. You'll need to just take your numbers and calculate the bitrate you need manually.
The mencoder documentation isn't much help either: it doesn't quite tell you which commands affect bitrates and how to set constant bitrates to control file size.
vbitrate=<value> Specify bitrate (pass 1/2) (default: 800).
Doesn't get much clearer than that...
Use tovid. It converts AVI files directly to DVD's. It takes care of all the arcane obscure options needed to do this. Thanks, Hal
--- Hal Duston <hald@kc.rr.com> wrote:
Use tovid. It converts AVI files directly to DVD's. It takes care of all the arcane obscure options needed to do this.
Thanks Hal, tovid does look like a very good solution for the video conversion, and even goes one step further by doing better menus than DVDStyler (if the screenshots can be believed). Back in the past I used Nero in Windows, and ever since it tried to reencode all my custom MPEG2 files during DVD creation I've been loath to let the DVD menumaker application convert the videos too. Of course, tovid isn't Nero, and may well be exactly what I'm looking for. Tricky to use in Ubuntu, though, since the ubuntu repositories apparently have broken tovid packages. Not impossible though, as the following link demonstrates how to use the existing Debian tovid package with Ubuntu. http://tovid.wikia.com/wiki/Installing_tovid/Ubuntu ____________________________________________________________________________________ Shape Yahoo! in your own image. Join our Network Research Panel today! http://surveylink.yahoo.com/gmrs/yahoo_panel_invite.asp?a=7
On Thursday 16 August 2007 05:34:04 am Leo Mauler wrote: [tovid is]
Tricky to use in Ubuntu, though, since the ubuntu repositories apparently have broken tovid packages.
tovid is mostly a collection of scripts and wrappers for console-mode tools on your system. As such, it's pretty safe to go outside the package manager and run the SVN version direct from the tovid site. Tovid's constantly being improved, and the #tovid irc channel is active and helpful.
--- Luke -Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
On Tuesday 14 August 2007, Leo Mauler wrote:
A friend of mine recently converted my 3 hour wedding video from VHS to AVI for me. I've trimmed what I could, but the remaining video is still two and one-half hours long.
Why are you doing VHS->"AVI"->MPEG-2? Unless your AVI is raw uncompressed video (hundreds of GB, IIRC), doing this is going to lose quite a significant bit of quality.
I received it as AVI (XviD video, MP3 audio). Frankly I don't really care about the final quality as long as the human eye can be fooled into thinking that it looks nice on a conventional television. That is, a television which is not widescreen, and can be described *without* using the numbers 720 or 1080. The entire point is that the video file must become a conventional DVD MPEG2 file, recordable onto a conventional DVD, playable on a conventional DVD player, and viewable on a conventional TV. Then it will be mailed out to my relatives, some of whom do not own computers but do own DVD players. Avidemux works great for simple editing of the file into multiple clips, which in turn will be converted into DVD MPEG2 files suitable for splicing together in a DVD menu created by DVDStyler. At least, this is my intention. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Moody friends. Drama queens. Your life? Nope! - their life, your story. Play Sims Stories at Yahoo! Games. http://sims.yahoo.com/
On Thursday 16 August 2007, Leo Mauler wrote:
I received it as AVI (XviD video, MP3 audio). Frankly I don't really care about the final quality as long as the human eye can be fooled into thinking that it looks nice on a conventional television.
That's hard enough with a digitally mastered DVD, let alone something that's been transcoded already. Unless "nice" means something like "shoddy broadcast quality" ;)
That is, a television which is not widescreen, and can be described *without* using the numbers 720 or 1080.
PAL? That's Europe only, isn't it? ;) (classic NTSC has always been 720i)
On 8/16/07, Luke -Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
That is, a television which is not widescreen, and can be described *without* using the numbers 720 or 1080.
PAL? That's Europe only, isn't it? ;)
(classic NTSC has always been 720i)
No it hasn't. It's 486 visible lines, of which a few often get lost off the top or bottom; most people round off as 480 lines and 640 columns actual viewable area.
On Thursday 16 August 2007, Monty J. Harder wrote:
On 8/16/07, Luke -Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
That is, a television which is not widescreen, and can be described *without* using the numbers 720 or 1080.
PAL? That's Europe only, isn't it? ;)
(classic NTSC has always been 720i)
No it hasn't. It's 486 visible lines, of which a few often get lost off the top or bottom; most people round off as 480 lines and 640 columns actual viewable area.
You're measuring the height. The width is 720. When transcoded for a computer, it is often scaled to 640x480 for square pixels.
On 8/16/07, Luke -Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
(classic NTSC has always been 720i)
No it hasn't. It's 486 visible lines, of which a few often get lost off the top or bottom; most people round off as 480 lines and 640 columns actual viewable area.
You're measuring the height. The width is 720. When transcoded for a computer, it is often scaled to 640x480 for square pixels.
What do you think 720i means? The height, not the width.
720i doesn't even exist (look it up). 720p refers to a widescreen resolution of 1280x720. NTSC runs much closer to 480i (which is a digital standard which is closely related to NTSC), which does have 720 *columns*. You get roughly 640x480 out of a normal NTSC TV, though the safely viewable area on most tube TVs is slightly smaller. The reason why the standards are referenced by rows is because you interlace on rows, not columns. The viewable column count is determined by the aspect ratio applied to the rows. ~Bradley Luke -Jr wrote:
On Thursday 16 August 2007, Leo Mauler wrote:
I received it as AVI (XviD video, MP3 audio). Frankly I don't really care about the final quality as long as the human eye can be fooled into thinking that it looks nice on a conventional television.
That's hard enough with a digitally mastered DVD, let alone something that's been transcoded already. Unless "nice" means something like "shoddy broadcast quality" ;)
That is, a television which is not widescreen, and can be described *without* using the numbers 720 or 1080.
PAL? That's Europe only, isn't it? ;)
(classic NTSC has always been 720i) _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
participants (6)
-
Bradley Hook -
Hal Duston -
Jonathan Hutchins -
Leo Mauler -
Luke -Jr -
Monty J. Harder