free dvd authoring tool

[trossin]

This stream is getting really long. Maybe a DVDAuthor sub-forum could be created so that it is easier to search and view. Just a thought. I get email every day from dvdauthor-users@lists.sourceforge.net but it is usually linux specific.

[Baldrick]

Is this a Linux or Windows program?

linux and windows.

[louv68]

Excuse my ignorance, but how can you tell which one you're downloading - Linux or Windows version? Also, does it work on Win9x?

[Abnormal]

Hi,
For windows you would want dvdauthor-0.6.9-win32.rar
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/dvdauthor/dvdauthor-0.6.9-win32.rar?download

I think there might be a problem with the max file size limit but not sure as i have not tried it with WIN98

Abnormal

[kazik1]

I'm sick of IfoEdit cuz most of my authorings are shorter than original source. I want to put subtitles created with SRT2SUP to DVD. I demux with VobEdit and put it back together with same chapters, audio and new subtitles with IfoEdit. But problem is that movie is shorter than original. I have no buffers-underun. I don't cut it just shrink main movies it with no compression and with only one audio track. Can anybody tell me what do I do wrong? I only created couple movies with its full lenght.

Thanks

[Compugup]

@abnormal
1 Error codes
In fact I thought that the error codes already are there, I'll do some testing also.

2 Slow spumux
What kind of subtitles/configuration are you using? I'm able to process 400 text subtitles into a 1 hour movie in roughly 10 minutes on a 1800 MHz system.

@kazik1
Use the DVDauthor text subtitle feature (documentation for that is now updated).

Compugup.

[Abnormal]

@Compugup
Hi,
I was multiplexing BMPs that DoItFast4u produced. There was 17 streams and each stream contained about 1500 pictures.

In fact thinking about it 2.5 hours is proberly correct for that many BMPS. I think i was just getting frustrated waiting.

Also, Does anyone happen to know if SPUMux will ever have the ability of having more than one stream in the XML file.
eg

        <subpictures>
            <stream>
                  <spu 
            </stream>
            <stream>
                  <spu 
            </stream>
        </subpictures>

Thanks
Abnormal

[Compugup]

Thanks Trckjunky (the DVDAuthor author) for releasing DVDA 0.6.10 !!!

Full changelog of DVDAuthor 0.6.10: March 15, 2004:

• Better audio type detection logic
  Clear seamless flag on audio discontinuity
  Only allow <titles> to exist once per titleset
  Use 'name' attribute for buttons and actions in spumux
  (to be consistant with dvdauthor)
  Dynamically allocate PGC buffer
  Allow up to 2730 titles
  Allow reading from filedescriptors for VOBs, palette, and XML
  Allow empty pre, post, cell, etc commands (parses to NOP)
  Optimize link & button=X instructions together
  Fix parsing of textsub->transparent
  Add text subtitle documentation
  Fix SVCD subtitling
  Support specifying resume cells from calls;
  default to #1 for post commands
  Make spuunmux use read instead of lseek (works on pipes)
  Fix YUV handling in spuunmux and subgen
  Handle 99 titlesets in dvdunauthor
  Support nonexistant audio channels
  Lazy colormap allocation
  Support VOBU's without audio or video

Until Trckjunky finds time to put the
DVDAuthor 0.6.10 Windows binaries on sourceforge

(http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=59028)

you can find them here:

http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~homit/dvdauthor

Compugup

[MadMovieBuff]

[I know I'm verbose, so my topic is:] compiling spumux under cygwin

Hello everyone,

I had developed a full DVB->DVD solution which looks up interesting movies on satellite from several websites, controls DVB-recording applications which handle subtitles (DVBControl/ProgDVB), controls PVAStrumento for demux, uses a home-brew program to convert SRT subtitles to sup supicture stream, and IFOEdit for remux+authoring, then burns using Nero. All I have to do is insert blank DVDs. I can send this program to anyone who's interested.

Now I'm converting this program to use PVAStrumento+mplex+spumux+dvdauthor+nero instead. It works fine, is faster than the old solution, but only works for files smaller than 2GB because I'm using Win98 and stdin redirection only works for files smaller than 2GB even on FAT32 (I couldn't believe it then I tried echo<1GBFile then echo <3GBfile with "access denied" on the latter !).

I do NOT have any problems on mplex with large files.

So I need to find a solution. I don't want to upgrade to Win2K. Then I thought I just needed to change spumux source so that it would accept the input mpeg as an argument instead of stdin. But I'm unable to compile dvdauthor 0.6.9 or spumux under cygwin. I've never compiled anything under linux or cygwin. What I did was:
- install cygwin with everything (except XFree) on f:\cygwin
- copy DVDAuthor source files to f:\cygwin\dvda
- run cygwin, cd to /dvda , type ./configure
- doesn't work because libdvdread is absent -> removed the check from "configure", guessed it was only necessary for dvdunauthor and the like
- but there are more problems: the zlib test fails, and then the libpng test fails (while I included the package libpng 1.0.12 in cygwin installation!).

Could someone explain how to compile dvdauthor 0.6.9 under cygwin, or (better yet) modify spumux so that it doesn't need stdin redirection ?

[Sakuya]

ifoedit is kinda limited so I was thinking of making a new free windows dvd authoring tool.

I found dvdauthor and compiled it for windows and it works fine and it supports most stuff like, chapters, several titlesets, all kind of audio and video, subtitles, menus, basic linking.

dvdauthor can support selectable subtitles? Is there a tutorial out there for it? Can this program in the Tools section support selectable subs and still menus? I still have not found a cheap way to add subs and still menus to my DVD.

https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=519#comments

[Compugup]

Hi Sakuya,

DVDA supports selectable subtitles.
Subtitles can be read from text or can be supplied as an image stream.

Liquid's DVDAGUI (A windows user interface for DVDAuthor) doesn't support subtitles (yet?).

Compugup.

[liquid217]

hi, compugup. Funny that you would mention that. Ive been working on a new version and im beginning to experiment with subtitle support. I rarely do anything with subtitles, so its kinda hard for me to fully test it. you can find a test version here:

http://users.adelphia.net/~liquid64/dvdauthorgui0.97.rar

This version also allows you to set the FPC (under post commands). Im also going to start working on a multi-menu feature soon

edit: added project saving/loading, multi-menu support, and a few other things (check the changelog)

[srt2sup]

Hi,

You can use my SupRemap program to set the colours in an IFO file. You can even parse a VOB file to find out which colours are being used in the palette after you have authored the DVD.

www.shipleys.eclipse.co.uk

I hope this helps?

Regards

Srt2Sup

[leandro_calcada]

Hi guys,

For subtitles I've been using MaestroSBT and submux-dvd. I know spumux can do all that, but maestro allows me some graphical control and best of all, it can import things like italic text from SSA files, which spumux doesn't seem able to. I'm preparing a guide about my method right away, if anyone is interested.

But here's my question: Does anybody knows anything about layer-break setting and general procedures for DVD-9 discs using things like IFOEdit or dvdauthor?

[Sakuya]

Hi Sakuya,

DVDA supports selectable subtitles.
Subtitles can be read from text or can be supplied as an image stream.

Liquid's DVDAGUI (A windows user interface for DVDAuthor) doesn't support subtitles (yet?).

Compugup.

Is DVDA free? Where is it's official site that supplies a download? Also, my subs were in IDX/SUB format. I managed to convert it to SSA. Plus, after that I editted the style and made some translation errors. So...can DVDA support it? Can DVDA make menus also?

[MadMovieBuff]

Subject: spumux with large files on Win98

Hello everybody,
I'm replying to myself. At last, I was able to recompile spumux so that it wouldn't need input redirection (which DOESN'T work on files larger than 2GB on Windows 98 ). If anyone wants the (trivial) source changes or the compiled version, just ask me.

With this modified version, the syntax is simply

spumux -i input.mpg script.xml >output.mpg

The original syntax still works

spumux script.xml <input.mpg >output.mpg

So, if anyone is interested, just ask...

[Baldrick]

Hi Sakuya,

DVDA supports selectable subtitles.
Subtitles can be read from text or can be supplied as an image stream.

Liquid's DVDAGUI (A windows user interface for DVDAuthor) doesn't support subtitles (yet?).

Compugup.

Is DVDA free? Where is it's official site that supplies a download? Also, my subs were in IDX/SUB format. I managed to convert it to SSA. Plus, after that I editted the style and made some translation errors. So...can DVDA support it? Can DVDA make menus also?

dvdauthor 0.6
dvdauthorgui

[Sakuya]

The GUI doesn't accept subtitles and I don't know how to work with command line tools.

[Baldrick]

The GUI doesn't accept subtitles and I don't know how to work with command line tools.

use liquids test version
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=855247#855247 (a few posts above this)

[liquid217]

MadMovieBuff
I would like to see the modifications you made, as i didn't realize that win98 suffers from a 2 gig limit when piping through stdin.

I have updated the test version of the gui, if anyone is interested.
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=855247#855247

[MadMovieBuff]

Liquid217,

Pretty trivial, just change subgen.c
Here's the output of a diff on subgen.c from version 0.6.9

696a697
> unsigned char *infile;
722a724
> infile=0;
724c726
< while( -1 != (optch=getopt(argc,argv,"hm:v:P")) ) {
---
> while( -1 != (optch=getopt(argc,argv,"hm:v:i:P")) ) {
749a752
> case 'i': infile = optarg; fprintf(stderr, "infile is %s\n", infile); break;
789c792
< fdi = 0;
---
> if (infile) {fdi=open(infile, O_RDONLY | O_BINARY); }else {fdi = 0;};

[Baldrick]

Authoring a dvd with srt subtitles works perfect with the dvdauthorgui 0.95 test version. Thanks liquid!!!

[Sakuya]

Can you make menus with that? I have got to try it once I get my new computer tomorrow. Thanks! Can't wait!

[Sakuya]

I installed it and it only takes menus in m2v, m1v, and mpv formats. How do you create those? I am making my still menus in Adobe Photoshop and I saved them as JPEG.

Edit:
As for the subtitles, it can accept SSA files. In Sub Station Alpha, I have set special styles such as for certain lines to appear at the top of the screen instead of the bottom. Will DVDAuthor keep these styles? Also, what is the WIDTH, HEIGHT and FPS referring to? Should I put the FPS the same as the MPEG-2?

Edit:
I saved my JPEG in Photoshop and then I went to "Create m2v Still", it said it was compliant and asked me where to save the m2v. So I saved it and then I added the menu. But the preview screen is all green! Please help!

[vhelp]

@ liquid217,

MadMovieBuff
I would like to see the modifications you made, as i didn't realize that win98 suffers from a 2 gig limit when piping through stdin.

I have updated the test version of the gui, if anyone is interested.

How about FAT32, which give us W98 users 4gigs instead of 2 for FAT16 ??
I was just courious.

-vhelp

[Compugup]

@Sakuya

As for the subtitles, it can accept SSA files. In Sub Station Alpha, I have set special styles such as for certain lines to appear at the top of the screen instead of the bottom. Will DVDAuthor keep these styles? Also, what is the WIDTH, HEIGHT and FPS referring to? Should I put the FPS the same as the MPEG-2?

1 No, at this moment DVDA/DVDAGUI do not handle the SSA special styles but can handle regular SSA subtitles.
2 Width and height are the width and height of the total subpicture frame (normally 720x576 for PAL and 720x480 for NTSC), some players want a few lines less (DVDAGUI uses 4 less, which is fine) than 576/480.

I hope that Liquid can answer your other question.

BTW @Liquid: Great job, the addition of subtitles!

Compugup.

[liquid217]

Sakuya has been emailing me and i replied to the "green preview screen" problem, but thought i would post it here as well. Photoshop, when saving at high quality, uses a sampling rate that apparently, jpeg2yuv does not like. The solution, is to simply lower the quality of the jpeg in photoshop, and it will convert nicely. The error that jpeg2yuv throws is:
**ERROR: [jpeg2yuv] Unsupported sampling factors!

@vhelp:
I believe the problem is independent of the fat32/16 limit and is yet another limitation of the 98/me architecture. Anyone who is more experienced in this, feel free to correct me. As of right now though, this only effects people who are creating subtitled titles, (or creating 2 gig menus).

@all: Im having trouble with the latest version not being fully dvd compliant, and it appears to be and issue with "jumppad" (which i enabled when creating multiple menus). In the next release, i may disable jumppad, (which basically means titles can only jump to other titles, or the FIRST menu, instead of ANY menu as it does now)

[johns0]

I have one problem when i try and use dvdauthorgui 0.95.when i try and start up the program office 2003 starts up and tries to install and i have to cancel this a few times before dvdauthorgui 0.95 will work,is there any workaround for this in short of uninstalling office 2003?

[liquid217]

The reason office 2k3 starts is because it can't find the necessary visual basic runtime files. These files can be found on the office disk, or you can simply get the runtime files here:
http://users.adelphia.net/~liquid64/vbruntimes.rar

[johns0]

Thanks for the tip,the runtime files didnt help so i let office 2003 install the files from the cd,i just thought it was linking to office by mistake.