free dvd authoring tool

That is great news VMesquita!

I' tried your MinGWStudio approach and it worked for mpgs and vobs, so there must have been something wrong with my Cygwin compilation!
I'm glad the MaestroSBT path worked for you.

If you enter below color settings from "menu.txt" of Dvdauthor in a file "yuvpalette.txt" and use the -p yuvpalette.txt option of Dvdauthor your colors will be correct:

008080
f08080
008080
008080
51f05a
902235
286df0
ca4892
aaaea4
de8948
aeb76d
49a6dc
616389
98bc51
37b389
718947

I think that you are aware that, now Submux/Submux-DVD works in a windows environment together with the Subtitle Workshop/MaestroSBT/Ifoedit approach, it is an additional freeware solution for a problem that many windows users asked for in the forums:
"How can I mux a subtitle in an existing DVD VOB/mpg?"

Well, you can use the above approach (even without Dvdauthor if you don't need authoring) and use Ifoedit to create a new subtitle-aware ifo and enter the color palette shown above.

Panteltje deserves all the credit, he created Submux for the unix/linux environment.

Together with DVDauthor it would be a full package. I hope that Baldrick succeeds on the GUI, the alpha looks promising.

My own interest in this, is to be able to put multiple SVCD's on a DVD (my DVD player can handle that) with menu and subtitles using freeware. I've seen already that it is necessary to change Submux to accept SVCD frames.

Compugup

Maybe the problem was the stuff you had to change in the code to get cygwin to work...
Will this color settigs you gave me work with MaestroSBT created subs?
It's nice to see a freeware program being able to do what no commecial software can (mux Subs in Vobs)
This GUI for dvdauthor will be great, I would love to contribute if I had some extra time...
To use SVCD subs in my DVDPlayer (CVD subs) and I have to render them in Full-D1 (doing SVCD). I never tried subs in other res than FullD1 in DVD so I have no idea how it works. But I guess that if a different resolution in needed, you would have to just change it in MaestroSBT, or if you have DVD-ripped subs, you would have to use SubRip to covert to text and then MaestroSBT... Or may there is an automated tool to shrink the BMPs...
Panteltje definatelly deserves a big thanks from all of us.

[]'s
VMesquita

Lordsmurf,

The same resource used for subs (subpicture) is also used for menus. But even subs are working nicely at least for me.I agree that it's not important to home-brew DVDs, but it's important for DVD backups for people living in non-english countrys.

[]'s
VMesquita

Vmesquita:

>>> Maybe the problem was the stuff you had to change in the code to get cygwin to work...

Yes, I think so too.
I now prefer the MINGW environment and I'm trying to get the DVDAuthor 454 package through, it is still a challenge because of the complex makefile.

>>> Will this color settigs you gave me work with MaestroSBT created subs?

Yes, I did almost all the testing with MaestroSBT created subs.

SVCD's:
DVD players that take SVCD's most of the time are able to handle DVD's with SVCD's on, look at ChrissyBoy's site for that.

Lordsmurf:
For me and a lot of other people, subs are important. Where I live, everything is subbed, movies have there original foreign soundtrack.

Compugup

I have been(and am) busy moving to a new apartment so I haven't done any more progamming. But it looks good with the subs/menu subpictures.

@ Baldrick..

New Apartment...

About your Avator.. is that your new landlord that you secretly took a
snap-shot of, hiding in a bush.. hehe... ?? :P

She's got some kisser (or he)

-vhelp

@Compugup
I used this pallete you suggested with maestrosbt subs but colors are still wrong...

@all
looks like mplex can't mux video files bigger than 2000 Mb (I use NTFS, so no filesystem problems). it cuts video when it reaches 2000 Mb...

[]'s
VMesquita

Thanks, I'll try that later.

[]'s
VMesquita

Anyone compiled the new version yet? dvd author 0.6.0? I can't get it to work. cygwin complains about an old libxml2 version but I have updated to latest libxml2 2.5.11.

@ChrissyBoy
Unfortunatelly, it doesn't work either... It complais it has to split... I also tried --max-segment-size 4000, but it insists on spliting. I'll try the mux provided by panteltje here: http://www.home.zonnet.nl/panteltje/dvd/, according to him the 2Gb bug is fixed. Compiled using cygwin as usual.

@Compugup
This time subs colors are right, I probably messed up something in the last try.

@Baldrick.
I didn't know it was out. I'll try to compile later.

[]'s
VMesquita

Baldrick,

Just did it. You have to compile and install the latest libxml2 from ftp://xmlsoft.org/ (that would be libxml2-2.6.0.tar.gz)
Then I got an error when compiling mpeg2desc.c. So I added this line in the begining:

#include <sys/time.h>

And it compiled!

[]'s
VMesquita

Originally Posted by vmesquita287

Baldrick,

Just did it. You have to compile and install the latest libxml2 from ftp://xmlsoft.org/ (that would be libxml2-2.6.0.tar.gz)
Then I got an error when compiling mpeg2desc.c. So I added this line in the begining:

#include <sys/time.h>

And it compiled!

[]'s
VMesquita

Could you post or email me the .exe? My cygwin don't work any more(complains about everything now and I'm no linux expert so I have no idea how to fix it). I have to reinstall it but I'm on a slow modem so I can't do it right now.

ChrissyBoy
I was using the latest tarball... I can't figure out how to use CVS. I am trying to login using:
$ cvs -dserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/mjpeg login
Logging in to server:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:2401/cvsroot/mjpeg
CVS password:
cvs login: authorization failed: server cvs.sourceforge.net rejected access to /
cvsroot/mjpeg for user anonymous

Is there anything wrong?

[]'s
VMesquita

Get it here:

http://www.jltoca.uaivip.com.br/files/dvdauthor-60-win32.zip

[]'s
VMesquita

ChrissyBoy,

I managed to get the source. But there's no configure or MakeFile. So I tried to run autogen.sh, but it ended when trying to run configure:

Running autoconf ...
Running ./configure --enable-maintainer-mode --enable-compile-warnings ...
checking build system type... i686-pc-cygwin
checking host system type... i686-pc-cygwin
checking target system type... i686-pc-cygwin
./configure: line 1408: syntax error near unexpected token `mjpegtools,'
./configure: line 1408: `AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(mjpegtools, $MJPEG_VERSION)'


But I managed to compile using Visual C++ with the provided workspace under the win32 folder. This new mplex shows "mjpegtools mplex-2 version 2.0.0" and my old one used to show: "mjpegtools mplex version 1.6.1". I'll try to mux a big file...

[]'s
VMesquita

I added my VC++ compiled mplex.exe to this package:

http://www.jltoca.uaivip.com.br/files/dvdauthor-60-win32.zip

[]'s
VMesquita

Also looks like the bug has been fixed (as you said), they changed the default parameter:
--max-segment-size|-S size
Maximum size of output file(s) in Mbyte (default: 0) (no limit)

There's a new mode: DVD with NAV packets (what is in fact a VOB, a believe). This would be useful for creating VOBs to import in DVDLab with subs. I guess now the correct option for just muxing is no longer -f 8, but -f 9. I'll test and post the results later.

[]'s
VMesquita

Hi VMesquita,

Great job (compiling 6.0).

I cygwinned 5.4, submux originally only worked for buttons not for real subtitles (there is an error in imgfix) but I'm now using submux-dvd 5.0 (don't forget to supply the transparency 0 15 15 15, because they default to 0) for subtitles because that also handles subtitles for SVCD vob's created with the ifoedit authoring feature:
- grab svcd mpeg file (avseq) preferable with an older free VCD-easy version (tool menu), you can copy but it is possible that you don't get a clean cut at the end
- demultiplex with tmpgenc in movie and mpa-file (not mp2)
- author with ifoedit using the movie and mpa file
- only save the vob and delete the rest
- submux-dvd using the maestrosbt generated subtitles (see earlier post)
- author with DVDA

If anyone interested I can ask Baldrick to make the win32 version of submux-dvd 5 available on the site.

DVD Files generated with the mplex -8 option work for subtitling with submux-dvd.


For MaestroSBT: I now use the text, outline, alias option in the rendering menu which gives better subs.
I created a new palette for subtitles titles (purple/light-light yellow/black/light-medium yellow=background/text/outline/alias) for dvda and Im using the palette I posted earlier for the menu-related titles.


Compugup

Compugup,

Why not mux using directly MPLEX, instead of IFOedit? This way you can automatize the process. MaestroSBT can be automated via AutoIT.

Is this submux-dvd 5.0 the one provided by Pantentje? This one seems to work fine for me but it doesn't hurt to try a different one...

I have been using this option for anti-alias in Maestro (3 colors) but the pallete I am using makes the anti-alias in the same color of the subs or the outline. Looks OK, but could be better. How do I create a different palette or better: how do I import MaestroSBT pallete (if there's a way)?

There's a SPUMUX in the dvdauthor package that seems to be able to create menus or subs using a XML structure in version 6. But there's very little documentation on this... If you wanna play with this, I posted inside the compiled package.
<edit>
I just checked the Pantentje page and saw version 0.5, I'll try to compile.
</edit>



[]'s
VMesquita

VMesquita,

I can't check everything now (I'm not at home) but:
1 I think I used ifoedit because mplex doesn't accept SVCD mpgs for DVD (-8 option). I'm not sure, I will check again because if you're right it saves indeed using another util.
2 I looked up the RGB values for the colors I mentioned in my post by using Paintshop Pro (I think every graphical package can be used) and edited a RGB palette .rgb (4 times same 4 values) for DVDA.

I'm gonna try your DVDA 6 package later this week.

Compugup.

Once I accidentally created a 640x288 MPEG2 from a divX file (forget to resize before encoding). I only realized that when I started muxing with mplex, but the program actually muxed. So 480x480 should be fine, I guess.
I'll try later the palette tip, thanks!

[]'s
VMesquita

VMesquita,

This is my rgb subtitle (not for buttons) palette (use .rgb extension):
ff80ff
e9e9cd
202020
eefb57
ff80ff
e9e9cd
202020
eefb57
ff80ff
e9e9cd
202020
eefb57
ff80ff
e9e9cd
202020
eefb57

Tried 6.0 dvda/spumux xml (just put some mpegs in example xml): both stackdumps

You were right with mplex, that also worked for SVCD files!

Compugup

Hi VMesquita,

Found it: the CYGWIN strcmp doesn't like NULL-pointers and that happens in several places in dvda, you have to "if (dest==NULL) " around it.
I got the XML's working but they don't make sense a lot yet, I will post as soon I've some meaningfull results. The auto-button creation feature starts to work.

Could you do a re-compile and publish the package again for the interested public?

Thanks, Compugup.