Creation of DVD movie under fedora from jpegs & asf video

[tom]

That wonderful time of year is coming up - Christmas. The  
time when families get together to celebrate each other,  
and fight over who gets to take home the leftovers. And so  
forth.

Anyway, I got the brilliant idea of putting a slide show  
together of the past year's pictures, tossing in a few  
(very few!) movie clips that are in asf format, get one of  
my musical offspring to choose a musical sound track, and  
put that at the Christmas festivities. Since I really don't  
want to babysit the show, and the gathering site doesn't  
have computerized display capability anyway, I figure DVD  
is the way to go. Trouble is, after a day of hitting the  
web and reading, I've managed to confuse myself.

Has anybody done this type of project with fedora who would  
also be willing to share advice and experience?

Thanks in advance

[Jay Cliburn]

Thompson Freeman wrote:
> Anyway, I got the brilliant idea of putting a slide show together of the 
> past year's pictures, tossing in a few (very few!) movie clips that are 
> in asf format,
> Has anybody done this type of project with fedora who would also be 
> willing to share advice and experience?

I did something similar about a year ago with video and stills I took of 
Hurricane Katrina during and after the storm.  I have a Sony DCR DVD403 video 
cam, which records onto mini-dvd and has a usb port; neither feature is 
conducive to easy use with Linux.  The only way to merge the video into a larger 
movie is yank the individual vob files off a finalized dvd, then chop them up 
and reassemble them in the order I want using dvdauthor.  I wrote myself a 
little howto.  It's ghastly, but it works.

You need vobwalker and videotrans.

[jcliburn@osprey howtos]$ more video_instructions.txt
Mount the mini-dvd iso image, if necessary.
$ sudo mount -o loop -t iso9660 /path/to/iso/image /mnt/fakecd

Concatenate the desired vob files into a single vob file.  Pay attention to the
order.
$ cat /mnt/fakecd/video_ts/vts_01_1.vob /mnt/fakecd/video_ts/vts_01_2.vob \
vts_02_1.vob > origname.vob

Split the vob file into its constituent cells in preparation for editing.
Vobwalker is available at
http://anachronda.homeunix.com:8000/~rivie/vobwalker/
$ vobwalker origname.vob "n%2.3d"

Use xine to find cells you don't want, then remove the file(s) that contain the
cell(s).
rm nXXX

Move the remaining cells into a subdirectory just to get them out of the way.
mkdir cells
mv n* cells

Make dvdauthor.xml. This particular example produces three (exceedingly
short) movies. The first two are real movies; the third is a group of
still images that appear for 5 seconds each when played.
$ cat dvdauthor.xml
<dvdauthor>
      <vmgm>
          <menus>
              <video format="ntsc" aspect="16:9" widescreen="nopanscan" />
              <audio/>
              <pgc entry="Title" pause="inf">
                  <pre>
                      if (g1 == 999) { button = g2; g1 = 0; }
                  </pre>
                  <vob file="title.vob"/>
                  <button>g0=0; jump titleset 1 menu;</button>
                  <button>g0=0; jump titleset 2 menu;</button>
                  <button>g0=0; jump titleset 3 menu;</button>
              </pgc>
           </menus>
      </vmgm>
      <titleset>
          <menus>
              <video format="ntsc" aspect="16:9" widescreen="nopanscan" />
              <audio/>
              <pgc>
                  <pre>jump title 1; </pre>
              </pgc>
          </menus>
          <titles>
              <video format="ntsc" aspect="16:9" widescreen="nopanscan"/>
              <audio/>
              <pgc>
                  <vob file="/tmp/dvd/washington/cells/g001"/>
                  <vob file="/tmp/dvd/washington/cells/g002"/>
                  <vob file="/tmp/dvd/washington/cells/g003"/>
                  <post>call vmgm menu;</post>
              </pgc>
          </titles>
      </titleset>
      <titleset>
          <menus>
              <video format="ntsc" aspect="16:9" widescreen="nopanscan"/>
              <audio/>
              <pgc>
                  <pre>jump title 1;</pre>
              </pgc>
          </menus>
          <titles>
              <video format="ntsc" aspect="16:9" widescreen="nopanscan"/>
              <audio/>
              <pgc>
                  <vob file="/tmp/dvd/washington/cells/w001"/>
                  <vob file="/tmp/dvd/washington/cells/w002"/>
                  <vob file="/tmp/dvd/washington/cells/w003"/>
                  <post>call vmgm menu;</post>
              </pgc>
          </titles>
      </titleset>
      <titleset>
          <!-- This titleset is still images, 4:3 format -->
          <menus>
              <video format="ntsc" aspect="4:3" widescreen="nopanscan"/>
              <audio/>
              <pgc>
                  <pre>jump title 1;</pre>
              </pgc>
          </menus>
          <titles>
              <video format="ntsc" aspect="4:3" widescreen="nopanscan"/>
              <audio/>
              <pgc>
                  <vob file="/tmp/dvd/washington/cells/w004" pause="5" />
                  <vob file="/tmp/dvd/washington/cells/w005" pause="5" />
                  <vob file="/tmp/dvd/washington/cells/w006" pause="5" />
                  <post>call vmgm menu;</post>
              </pgc>
          </titles>
      </titleset>
</dvdauthor>

Select among the cell files the ones to represent the menu selections.
A still image of the cell will appear as menu item.
$ cp cells/nXXX Menu1.vob
$ cp cells/nYYY Menu2.vob
$ cp cells/nZZZ Menu3.vob

Make the title background.  This background is solid black.
The "movie-" commands come from videotrans, available at Sourceforge.
$ movie-make-title-simple -o title -m ntsc

Make the menu.
$ movie-title -o title.vob -T 2x2 -t title Menu1.vob Menu2.vob Menu3.vob

Make the dvd file structure.
$ dvdauthor -o iso -x dvdauthor.xml

Clean up the menu stuff.
$ movie-title -C -o title.vob -T 2x2 -t title Menu1.vob Menu2.vob Menu3.vob

Check the dvd file structure with xine.
$ xine dvd:/path/to/iso/dir

Make the iso image file.

[Robin Laing]

Thompson Freeman wrote:
> That wonderful time of year is coming up - Christmas. The  time when 
> families get together to celebrate each other,  and fight over who gets 
> to take home the leftovers. And so  forth.
>
> Anyway, I got the brilliant idea of putting a slide show  together of 
> the past year's pictures, tossing in a few  (very few!) movie clips that 
> are in asf format, get one of  my musical offspring to choose a musical 
> sound track, and  put that at the Christmas festivities. Since I really 
> don't  want to babysit the show, and the gathering site doesn't  have 
> computerized display capability anyway, I figure DVD  is the way to go. 
> Trouble is, after a day of hitting the  web and reading, I've managed to 
> confuse myself.
>
> Has anybody done this type of project with fedora who would  also be 
> willing to share advice and experience?
>
> Thanks in advance

I have used mplayer/mencoder to do this.   I have also use The GIMP to 
create AVI's from individual frames as layers.

Follow most of Jay Cliburn's comments for creating the DVD.  Note, if 
the VOB is to large, some DVD players won't play it.

[tom]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2006, Robin Laing wrote:
> Thompson Freeman wrote:
> > Thanks in advance
>
> I have used mplayer/mencoder to do this.   I have also use The GIMP to create 
> AVI's from individual frames as layers.
>
> Follow most of Jay Cliburn's comments for creating the DVD.  Note, if the VOB 
> is to large, some DVD players won't play it.

My thanks to you and Jay. I'll see if I can bring success to the project