IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE, INSTALL ALL DEPENDENCIES AND THEN FOLLOW
THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THE EXTRACT AND INSTALL SECTION!!!!
This README applies to dvd-homevideo_0.4.0.1
This code was written, tested and run on an Intel Celeron 2.4 GHz
processor with 768 MB of RAM and a 120 GB harddrive.
DEPENDENCIES:
=============
You MUST HAVE the following programs installed (see the webpage for links):
dvgrab
transcode
mjpegtools (mpeg2enc, mp2enc, mplex)
ffmpeg
dvd-slideshow (dvd-menu_0.7.5)
dvdauthor
mkisofs and/or dvd+rw-tools (growisofs)
imagemagick (convert program)
Java JRE 1.5 (this is needed for the GUI)
sox
I know that this list is somewhat exhaustive...try to use urpmi or yum or some
kind of package manager.
MODULES:
========
To communicate over firewire with your camcorder, the raw1394 module
must be loaded. First, check to see if it exists. Look for the
existence of /dev/raw1394. If it does not exist then as root type:
mknod -m 0666 /dev/raw1394 c 171 0
To load the module, as root type: modprobe raw1394
EXTRACT and INSTALL:
====================
IT IS UP TO YOU TO ENSURE THAT YOU HAVE ALL OF THE DEPENDENCIES INSTALLED!!!
THIS PROGRAM WILL FAIL IF ALL OF THE DEPENDENCIES ARE NOT CORRECTLY INSTALLED!!!
To install dvd-homevideo, you simply need to extract the files to a local directory
This is what I would recommend:
user$ cd /usr/local/src/
user$ tar xjf dvd-homevideo_0.4.0.1.bz2
OR
user$ tar xzf dvd-homevideo_0.4.0.1.tar.gz
And now to run dvd-homevideo:
user$ cd dvd-homevideo_0.4.0.1/dist
user$ java -jar dvd-homevideo_0.4.0.1.jar
USING dvd-homevideo:
=====================
First of all, if you have any problems or questions my email is santner at gmail dot com
Please be as descriptive as possible. Include all of the files in the log/
directory as well as the dvd-homevideo.err file in the top level directory
of your project.
Second, the purpose of this code is to be very simple. You plug in your
dv camcorder, run dvd-homevideo with the options you prefer, come back hours
later (depending on the type of system that you have) and you have
a home video capable of being burned to a dvd disc. 99% of your time should
be spent in setting this up and the other 1% using and enjoying. Be patient
installing the dependencies because once you get everything in place, it is so
easy to made home video dvd's!
From the GUI you can specify:
1.) Capture time
This is the amount of time you want to capture video from your camcorder.
Capture time is specified in minutes and seconds. The maximum minute value
is 64 and the maximum second time is 59.
2.) DVD Quality
a.) Super - I would recommend this setting for most situations
b.) Good - This is really pretty good also
c.) Average - I use this setting mostly for testing
3.) DVD Menu
You can create a menu for your DVD with a custom picture for the background
as well as custom audio to play while the menu is displayed. You can also
specify titles for different segments of the menu. I would recommend specifying
an empty title file that has already been created, then while the transcoding is
taking place fill in the text file with the titles you want. The benefit of this
is that you can use a media player such as xine to view each .dv file in the
projects 'dv' directory and come up with a list of titles while the DVD is being
processed. Of course you can do this before hand as well, just is more convenient
this way.
4.) Output Directory
This is where all of your files will be stored. The organization is such:
Output_Directory/
|
|--dv/
| |
| ---*.dv
|
|
|--DVD/
| |
| |
| |--AUDIO_TS/
| |
| ---VIDEO_TS/
|
|
---log/
|
|--*.log
|
---*.err
The 'Output_Directory' is automatically created with the name that you supply
as the 'title' of the DVD. The dv directory contains all of the .dv files.
These files are enormous and you must ensure that you have a ton of free space
on your hard drive. I would say that you are safe with 20 Gigabytes. The DVD
directory contains the DVD structure that is actually written to disk. This is
the output from the dvdauthor program. Finally, the log directory contains
both normal output from all of the programs called as well as errors. This would
be a good place to look if you are having problems.
5.) NTSC or PAL
NTSC is for the US and PAL is everywhere else.
6.) Aspect Ratio
4:3 for standard tv's and 16:9 for widescreen televisions.
7.) Burn to DVD
There is a checkbox to burn when complete, I typically don't use this because
I like to test out the video first.
Tools Menu
=====================
There are times when the program will fail (believe it or not) and
when it does it can be a real pain to have to recapture the video from
the camcorder, or to have to retranscode the video if the error was in
the menu creation. This is where the tools menu comes in handy. You
can specify that dvd-homevideo should skip a certain portion if
something has already been completed. The sequential order that
dvd-homevideo executes in is:
1. Capture Video from the camcorder
2. Transcode captured video into DVD format
3. Create the background menu of the DVD
4. Create the DVD filesystem that will be burned to disk
5. Burn to disk
So as an example, if there was an error transcoding then you could
skip the capture part, and pickup at the transcode portion of the
software saving you the time that it would take to have to recapture
the video from your camcorder.
This menu also contains user preferences with regards to the video format (PAL
or NTSC) and the aspect ratio (4:3 or 16:9).
.dvd-homevideo directory and loading/saving sessions
=====================================================
dvd-homevideo now creates a hidden directory (.dvd-homevideo) in your
home directory. This is where xml files are stored which are used to
save information about previous sessions. All sessions are
automatically saved when you start capturing from your camcorder.
Once a session has been saved it can be reloaded by selecting open
from the file menu. This is probably my favorite new feature because
when I run through testing scenarios it comes in extremely handy!
In this directory I also save a file called preferences which is where I store
the information about the individual users preferences. This is an xml file
without the .xml extension.
Title File
=====================
The title file is simply a text file with one title per line used for the dvd menu.
The breaks in the video occur every time that you stop and restart recording. For
example, if you start and stop five times, and the first three are at your friends
house and the last two are at home, then your text file could look like:
'Visiting a friend'
blank
blank
'Home sweet home'
blank
DONE
Notice the ' around multiple words with spaces, this is not necessary for single words (Yes
you can use spaces in this file - and this file only...nowhere else). The "blank" signifies
that you were still at your friends house or still at home for the second, third and fifth
video sequence, and DONE tells the program that the end of the file has been reached. Now
what you will see on the DVD menu will be two titles: Visiting a friend and Home sweet home.