command line: chaining titles

[Lukas Winter]

Hello everybody,

first of all, thanks for this wonderful program to all developers and
contributors. I am currently using dvdauthor to create DVDs from episodes
of a series recorded from TV. These episodes are on backup DVDs created by
my standalone HD recorder. For each episode I want to burn on a DVD I
insert the correct backup DVD into my drive, then I call ffmpeg -i
"/media/dvd/VIDEO_TS/VTS_M_N.VOB" -acodec copy -vcodec copy \ -target
pal-dvd - | dvdauthor -o "..." -t -f - to remux and copy it to my HD.
In the end I add a little menu and burn everything on a fresh DVD. This
works fine and dvdauthor creates a new titleset for each episode. When
playback reaches the end of an episode, however, it just freezes until I
press the menu button on my remote to return to the main menu. I'd like to
watch all episodes on the DVD consecutively or at least to return to the
main menu after each episode. Using something like '-i post="jump title
n;"' for each episode does not work, because the next episode does not
exist yet, same with the main menu. How can I make the player jump to the
next title after playing the previous one using dvdauthor from the command
line? I'd like to stick to the command line for adding titles because it
allows me to change source DVDs before each invocation while the XML file
just makes dvdauthor rush through the whole process copying the wrong VOBs
from the wrong backup DVDs. Creating the main menu in the end also allows
me to make thumbnails from each episode and adding them to the main menu.
Do I really have to write an XML file for every DVD I make or is this
possible using the command line?

Thanks,

Lukas Winter



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[Joo Martin-4]

Hallo Lukas,

----
Am Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:48:20 +0000 (UTC) schrieb
Lukas Winter <lukas-winter@...>:

> line? I'd like to stick to the command line for adding titles because it
> allows me to change source DVDs before each invocation while the XML file
> just makes dvdauthor rush through the whole process copying the wrong VOBs
> from the wrong backup DVDs. Creating the main menu in the end also allows
> me to make thumbnails from each episode and adding them to the main menu.
> Do I really have to write an XML file for every DVD I make or is this
> possible using the command line?

If you want to use an easy tool using dvdauthor, then try "DVDwizard".
With some options it creates the xml-file for dvdauthor and then it
creates the hole dvd directory. Look here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvdwizard/
http://dvdwizard.wershofen.net/

You can also get packages for Debian and OpenSuSE.

Here a simple example:

  dvdwizard -t auto -c 30 title1.mpg \
            -t auto -b bckgrnd.ppm title2.mpg

Ciao,  Joo

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[Lukas Winter]

Am Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:54:05 +0200 schrieb Joo Martin:

> Hallo Lukas,
>
> If you want to use an easy tool using dvdauthor, then try "DVDwizard".
> With some options it creates the xml-file for dvdauthor and then it
> creates the hole dvd directory. Look here:
>
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvdwizard/
> http://dvdwizard.wershofen.net/
>
> You can also get packages for Debian and OpenSuSE.
>
> Here a simple example:
>
>   dvdwizard -t auto -c 30 title1.mpg \
>             -t auto -b bckgrnd.ppm title2.mpg
>
> Ciao,  Joo
>
>

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> http://p.sf.net/sfu/Challenge

Hallo Joo,

dvdwizard does indeed look interesting. Unfortunately I have already
written a perl script for a similar task ;) I create a menu with
imagemagick and ffmpeg that is similar to the ones dvdwizards creates
(although not looking as polished). I'd like to stick to that.
While skipping through the documentation, the words "temporary DVD
structure" caught my eye. That sounds exactly like what I'm looking for.
The real problem is not writing out an XML file but changing source discs
during the authoring process. Perhaps a look into your source code (if
you don't mind) could reveal a solution.

Grüße,
Lukas



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[Joo Martin-4]

Hello Lukas,

----
Am Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:31:11 +0000 (UTC) schrieb
Lukas Winter <lukas-winter@...>:

> dvdwizard does indeed look interesting. Unfortunately I have already
> written a perl script for a similar task ;) I create a menu with
Can you send me your perl script?

> While skipping through the documentation, the words "temporary DVD
> structure" caught my eye. That sounds exactly like what I'm looking for.
This means it make the same structure as of DVD on HDD for easy burning:
  dvd/AUDIO_TS/
  dvd/VIDEO_TS/

> The real problem is not writing out an XML file but changing source discs
> during the authoring process. Perhaps a look into your source code (if
> you don't mind) could reveal a solution.
What are your "source discs"? DVDwizard works only with VOB-files.

If you have some new ideas for dvdauthor or dvdwizard - let hear!

Ciao,  Joo

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[Lawrence D'Oliveiro-2]

Lukas Winter wrote:

> I'd like to stick to the command line for adding titles because it
> allows me to change source DVDs before each invocation while the XML file
> just makes dvdauthor rush through the whole process copying the wrong VOBs
> from the wrong backup DVDs.

You could feed it the video via named pipes
<http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=200808221516.58772.andreas.frisch%40multimedia-labs.de&forum_name=dvdauthor-users>.

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[Lukas Winter]

Am Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:24:03 +0200 schrieb Joo Martin:

> Hello Lukas,
>
> ----
> Am Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:31:11 +0000 (UTC) schrieb Lukas Winter
> <lukas-winter@...>:
>
>> dvdwizard does indeed look interesting. Unfortunately I have already
>> written a perl script for a similar task ;) I create a menu with
> Can you send me your perl script?

Of course. Mind you, it is written for just this specific task and can't
do anything that dvdwizard doesn't do. It reads a series of commands from
a file and does what they tell it to do. Most things are hard-coded,
though.

>
>> While skipping through the documentation, the words "temporary DVD
>> structure" caught my eye. That sounds exactly like what I'm looking
>> for.
> This means it make the same structure as of DVD on HDD for easy burning:
>   dvd/AUDIO_TS/
>   dvd/VIDEO_TS/
So will dvdauthor copy those files again or will it just fix the VOBUs
and create the rest of the DVD structure?
>
>> The real problem is not writing out an XML file but changing source
>> discs during the authoring process. Perhaps a look into your source
>> code (if you don't mind) could reveal a solution.
> What are your "source discs"? DVDwizard works only with VOB-files.
>
The episodes I want to burn are already on DVDs. They don't have a proper
menu and the order is all mixed up, so I let dvdauthor copy the episodes
from these source discs to a new DVD structure with a proper menu.

> If you have some new ideas for dvdauthor or dvdwizard - let hear!
>
Well, I haven't looked at the source thoroughly but if dvdwizard writes a
lot of temporary files, pipes could speed up things and save disk space.



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[Lukas Winter]

Am Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:29:30 +1200 schrieb Lawrence D'Oliveiro:

> Lukas Winter wrote:
>
>> I'd like to stick to the command line for adding titles because it
>> allows me to change source DVDs before each invocation while the XML
>> file just makes dvdauthor rush through the whole process copying the
>> wrong VOBs from the wrong backup DVDs.
>
> You could feed it the video via named pipes
> <http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?
thread_name=200808221516.58772.andreas.frisch%40multimedia-
labs.de&forum_name=dvdauthor-users>.

Hey, that sounds like the perfect solution! I've been meddling with named
pipes before while trying to remux using mplex (ffmpeg makes things a lot
easier, though). I'll still have to write out the whole XML file before
copying VOBs but I can make dvdauthor block as soon as I have to change
discs. Shame on me that I haven't found this thread.

Thanks,
Lukas



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