[lug] Creating digital video

[Lori Reed]

Steve Sullivan wrote:

> I have a DVD created from a tape-to-dvd machine - how
> do I convert the files to some standard Linux video
> format?  The files are in two subdirs:

kaffeine is a video player that can play dvd's ripped to disk.

File->Open Directory

> ./VIDEO_RM:
> VIDEO_RM.BUP  VIDEO_RM.DAT  VIDEO_RM.IFO

.bup is a BackUP of the .ifo (InFO) file. They both contain the same 
data. This is a binary file that tells the dvd player what to do with 
the menu and video. I know of no tool that will allow direct editing of 
these files (but I'd like to have one).

I don't know what's in the .dat file. For that matter, I've not before 
seen the video_rm directory, but I'm also no expert.

> ./VIDEO_TS:
> VIDEO_TS.BUP  VIDEO_TS.VOB  VTS_01_0.IFO  VTS_01_2.VOB
> VTS_01_4.VOB
> VIDEO_TS.IFO  VTS_01_0.BUP  VTS_01_1.VOB  VTS_01_3.VOB

The .vob files are mpeg video files and can be readily read by common 
Linux tools. You'll notice these are no larger than 1GB - I'm sure 
that's a limit imposed by the now ancient dvd standard.

You can also concatenate these into one file for editing, if you wish. ie:

cat VTS_01_1.VOB VTS_01_2.VOB VTS_01_3.VOB VTS_01_4.VOB >fullvid.mpg

Avidemux is my preferred gui video editor, but the command line tools 
ffmpeg and mencoder are often necessary.

ManDVD is an easy to use dvd authoring tool.

I'm in the process of switching from KDE to Gnome (sigh... it's a long, 
sad, aggravating story) so I'm still used to using the KDE tools.

k9copy can rip dvd's to disk.

k3b is a good cd/dvd burner, but may have issues verifying the burnt disk.

Lori