Creation of DVD movie under fedora from jpegs & asf video

[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 at 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.