hi...
i have a possible project that's going to require that i get into the world of dvd. i'd need to be able to play around with/create/play dvd media files...
initial research on google seems to give a number of open source apps for playing dvds (xine/mplayer). are there associated open source tools for editing the underlying dvd files...
so, my questions: what's the easiest tool to use to get started looking/playing around with dvd files on FC3? are there "open source" test dvd files that I can use to test/play with? ideally, I want to be able to take a test dvd file, add some information to it, play the file, see the results of the 'information add' operation
any thoughts/etc... would be helpful and appreciated.
thanks
bruce bedouglas@earthlink.net
On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 11:15:04 -0700, bruce wrote:
hi...
i have a possible project that's going to require that i get into the world of dvd. i'd need to be able to play around with/create/play dvd media files...
initial research on google seems to give a number of open source apps for playing dvds (xine/mplayer). are there associated open source tools for editing the underlying dvd files...
so, my questions: what's the easiest tool to use to get started looking/playing around with dvd files on FC3? are there "open source" test dvd files that I can use to test/play with? ideally, I want to be able to take a test dvd file, add some information to it, play the file, see the results of the 'information add' operation
any thoughts/etc... would be helpful and appreciated.
thanks
bruce bedouglas@earthlink.net
Both xine and mplayer are players, they do not modify the files, so in particular you can't add information, etc. For viewing they are both good viewers, and the defaults are fine, and so is vlc (video-lan client). I liked oggle too, but for some reason it disappeared from FC4.
To change the files, you need e.g. mencoder, or transcode. All of these programs can handle many video formats, so they use many codecs, each with many many options of its own. Consequently, for all but the simplest encoding tasks, there are a zillion options to tune the encoding, far too many to be discussed here. If you're serious about it, you must subscribe to the mplayer and/or transcode mailing lists. Often, for the most obscure options, help can only come from the developers themselves.
For mencoder there is a very decent gui called acidrip, which allows you to select the most useful/common options. For transcode there is dvd::rip, but I checked it out about a month ago and seemed it didn't keep up with transcode.
For simple dvd ripping there are other tools specialized in that, like vobcopy, dvdbackup, streamdvd, probably more. Vlc does ripping too.
--On Sunday, October 23, 2005 9:01 PM -0400 "Amadeus W. M." amadeus84@cablespeed.com wrote:
Both xine and mplayer are players, they do not modify the files, so in particular you can't add information, etc. For viewing they are both good viewers, and the defaults are fine, and so is vlc (video-lan client). I liked oggle too, but for some reason it disappeared from FC4.
I wanted to watch my new Firefly boxed set, so I tried both xine and mplayer, and neither displayed the opening menu, just the initial animation before the menu. I was able to play the disk with VLC on Win2k, though. I haven't had a chance to go back and try VLC on FC4 to see if it's any better.
On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 07:21:09 -0700, Kenneth Porter wrote:
--On Sunday, October 23, 2005 9:01 PM -0400 "Amadeus W. M." amadeus84@cablespeed.com wrote:
Both xine and mplayer are players, they do not modify the files, so in particular you can't add information, etc. For viewing they are both good viewers, and the defaults are fine, and so is vlc (video-lan client). I liked oggle too, but for some reason it disappeared from FC4.
I wanted to watch my new Firefly boxed set, so I tried both xine and mplayer, and neither displayed the opening menu, just the initial animation before the menu. I was able to play the disk with VLC on Win2k, though. I haven't had a chance to go back and try VLC on FC4 to see if it's any better.
Yes, I forgot to mention, mplayer does not play menus (forget about xine), but that's a feature that command line fanatics (such as the mplayer developers, or myself) like. Go directly to the movie. If I remember correctly oggle did play the menus, and kaffeine (which I forgot to mention in my previous post) does that too. And so does vlc.
--On Monday, October 24, 2005 7:26 PM -0400 "Amadeus W. M." amadeus84@cablespeed.com wrote:
Yes, I forgot to mention, mplayer does not play menus (forget about xine), but that's a feature that command line fanatics (such as the mplayer developers, or myself) like. Go directly to the movie. If I remember correctly oggle did play the menus, and kaffeine (which I forgot to mention in my previous post) does that too. And so does vlc.
Ok, thanks for the feedback. In this case I was watching the disk that had the last few episodes plus all the bonus material, and so I needed some way to select which item I wanted to watch. There was no single "movie", so mplayer/xine jumped into the short intro video, which was pretty useless.
Knowing that they're oriented at command line users (I qualify) I now know to check the docs to look for some way to select which component to play on the command line, instead of trying to launch from the Gnome menu and expecting an application menu to provide that. It's somewhat misleading to see the fancy "skin" on those apps that makes it look like a physical DVD player and find that it lacks a way to choose which item to play. That's not a complaint, just a gotcha to warn new users about when recommending a player to avoid frustration.
(BTW, the bonus material for Firefly is pretty good stuff.)
On Tuesday 25 October 2005 01:26, Amadeus W. M. wrote:
Yes, I forgot to mention, mplayer does not play menus (forget about xine), but that's a feature that command line fanatics (such as the mplayer developers, or myself) like. Go directly to the movie.
Interesting to see that lack of feature is turned into something good :-) I think the application should be able to do both as you chose.
On the other hand, DVD's are intended to start with a menu so for the majority of people I think xine is more on track regarding DVD playing.
Anyway, both xine and mplayer have their own advantages. I guess one simply has to chose or use both depending on the situation.
Regards, Marcel
On Thu, 2005-10-27 at 02:19 +0200, Marcel Janssen wrote:
On the other hand, DVD's are intended to start with a menu so for the majority of people I think xine is more on track regarding DVD playing.
I think this is the worst aspect of DVDs.
When I play a music disc, I want to hear the music. I put it in and press play, it plays the music.
DVD players should work the same way: Put it in, press play, the movie begins. I've got a menu button on my player *should* I want to do something else (like sit through several minutes of animated menus, one after another, several copyright warnings in different languages, and three film company brag clips, etc).
Tim wrote:
On Thu, 2005-10-27 at 02:19 +0200, Marcel Janssen wrote:
On the other hand, DVD's are intended to start with a menu so for the majority of people I think xine is more on track regarding DVD playing.
I think this is the worst aspect of DVDs.
When I play a music disc, I want to hear the music. I put it in and press play, it plays the music.
DVD players should work the same way: Put it in, press play, the movie begins. I've got a menu button on my player *should* I want to do something else (like sit through several minutes of animated menus, one after another, several copyright warnings in different languages, and three film company brag clips, etc).
Customer demands for these features on DVD's is the issue. I don't like the DVD's that have all the ad's that cannot be skipped but then I use the time to get the popcorn and do other things (someone mention beer :) ) that allow me to just sit and enjoy. Isn't this what most people do during the commercials?
On Thu, 2005-10-27 at 09:47 -0600, Robin Laing wrote:
Customer demands for these features on DVD's is the issue.
I really question all these "the customer demanded it" answers to things. How many people really told Fox/MGM/Paramount/UA/etc. that they want fancy menus on DVDs? I think that's just a fantasy in the marketdroid's head.
What do you think people would say if they were asked if they wanted to easily just sit down and watch a movie, or had to click through a few screens for a few minutes before they could watch a movie. I know what my answer would be, amd the answer of lots more people that I know, particularly the few that only barely understand that they've got to put a disc in the player *and* put the TV on the right channel/video input to watch the disc, never mind having to faff about pushing more buttons.
It's like the glossy crap we get from banks in our mail. I really don't believe the PR bulldust that most of their customers actually told them we want them to do that. I doubt that even any customers told them that.
I don't like the DVD's that have all the ad's that cannot be skipped but then I use the time to get the popcorn and do other things (someone mention beer :) ) that allow me to just sit and enjoy. Isn't this what most people do during the commercials?
Puts disc in, it starts doing something. Goes away, gets food. Comes back, finds it 10 minutes into movie. Tries to go back to start of movie, lands at a menu that makes you click through four slow pages, and watch two even slower, and un-fast-forwardable, lots of gumph before you can watch the movie.
We paid good money for a sadistic disc that abuses us in this way?
Tim wrote:
On Thu, 2005-10-27 at 09:47 -0600, Robin Laing wrote:
Customer demands for these features on DVD's is the issue.
I really question all these "the customer demanded it" answers to things. How many people really told Fox/MGM/Paramount/UA/etc. that they want fancy menus on DVDs? I think that's just a fantasy in the marketdroid's head.
What do you think people would say if they were asked if they wanted to easily just sit down and watch a movie, or had to click through a few screens for a few minutes before they could watch a movie. I know what my answer would be, amd the answer of lots more people that I know, particularly the few that only barely understand that they've got to put a disc in the player *and* put the TV on the right channel/video input to watch the disc, never mind having to faff about pushing more buttons.
It's like the glossy crap we get from banks in our mail. I really don't believe the PR bulldust that most of their customers actually told them we want them to do that. I doubt that even any customers told them that.
I don't like the DVD's that have all the ad's that cannot be skipped but then I use the time to get the popcorn and do other things (someone mention beer :) ) that allow me to just sit and enjoy. Isn't this what most people do during the commercials?
Puts disc in, it starts doing something. Goes away, gets food. Comes back, finds it 10 minutes into movie. Tries to go back to start of movie, lands at a menu that makes you click through four slow pages, and watch two even slower, and un-fast-forwardable, lots of gumph before you can watch the movie.
We paid good money for a sadistic disc that abuses us in this way?
I would like to just put the DVD in and play it but from market surveys, customers want all the extras. It was one of the features that pushed DVD sales way over video cassettes. Heck, many people that I talk to about DVD's spend more time talking about the extras. Why do all the dual DVD or sets sell so well? In many cases it is the extras.
And the other option is to rip the DVD and make a backup the way you want. I am looking at making a movie server for my home system.
I admit that there are times that all the crud in the front is a real pain. Especially unskippable commercials.
On Fri, 2005-10-28 at 09:09 -0600, Robin Laing wrote:
I would like to just put the DVD in and play it but from market surveys, customers want all the extras. It was one of the features that pushed DVD sales way over video cassettes. Heck, many people that I talk to about DVD's spend more time talking about the extras. Why do all the dual DVD or sets sell so well? In many cases it is the extras.
While I agree people like the extras, I doubt that all would be too happy about the way they're done (convoluted menus, hidden items, mystery navigation, etc.).
I don't think much of marketing surveys, they're either skewed to present the desired results, or just stupidly done. I'm quite confident that if people were asked if they'd like the first press of the play button to just play the movie, and the menu button could let them do everything else, that'd be popular. Most especially if you asked them, too, if it was annoying having to work through a disc like most force you to, currently.
Tim wrote:
On Fri, 2005-10-28 at 09:09 -0600, Robin Laing wrote:
I would like to just put the DVD in and play it but from market surveys, customers want all the extras. It was one of the features that pushed DVD sales way over video cassettes. Heck, many people that I talk to about DVD's spend more time talking about the extras. Why do all the dual DVD or sets sell so well? In many cases it is the extras.
While I agree people like the extras, I doubt that all would be too happy about the way they're done (convoluted menus, hidden items, mystery navigation, etc.).
I don't think much of marketing surveys, they're either skewed to present the desired results, or just stupidly done. I'm quite confident that if people were asked if they'd like the first press of the play button to just play the movie, and the menu button could let them do everything else, that'd be popular. Most especially if you asked them, too, if it was annoying having to work through a disc like most force you to, currently.
Actually marketing was looking at how to get people to purchase DVDs without the extras so the studios could then sell an "extras laden" version later. It didn't work. People will just wait for the extras version.
Some of the hidden menus are just fun to find.
-
Amadeus W.M. -
bruce -
Kenneth Porter -
korgull -
Robin Laing -
Tim