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Home  Guides Linux How to convert DivX/XviD/MPEG to DVD with menu using manDVD
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How to convert DivX/XviD/MPEG to DVD with menu using manDVD |
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I
consider myself a rather old Linux user. I remember playing around with
Slackware and failing to complete the installation, then getting a copy
of Corel Linux (yes, it did exist!) before using Redhat, then SuSE and
finally ending up with Ubuntu since version 4.10. During those
years the growth of Linux desktop has been amazing. From fighting with
the command line or trying for hours to play a video file, nowadays
Linux is the desktop leader in features and effects with projects like
Compiz that generate amazing 3D effects much better than the ones in
the much advertised Windows Vista.
Of course not
only Linux
matured but the applications that run on the platform did as well. I
remember I used to boot my Windows partition almost only to use video
tools, like ConvertXToDVD
or Nero as I couldn't find a working choice on Linux. However this is
no longer the case. There are many great video applications for Linux,
some of them even better than commercial ones for Windows, all of them
not just free but open source as well! This guide is the first one in a
series of guides we will add about Linux video programs. The program we
will use is ManDVD, a frontend for many command line tools. Let me tell
you beforehand that this program is simply amazing. The amount of the
tasks it can achieve is enormous, the GUI is simple and the control you
have over the DVD you are creating is almost perfect.
 | You can download ManDVD for various Linux distributions from
here.
It needs quite a few programs and depends in many KDE libs so
downloading a deb or rpm is preferred over compiling the source. For
your information I am running Ubuntu in the PC I used for the
guide. |
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When
you open ManDVD you will see this screen. Here you should first of all
set the Destination folder (1). Make sure it has at least 5GB of free
space. Then you should select between PAL and NTSC and set the
resolution (better use the default 720 one) (2) or open a saved project
file (3). Finally click Confirm to start using the program. |
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This
is the main manDVD window. The first step is to add your files.
Obviously selecting "Add a video to your project" (1) will allow you to
select a file to add to the DVD. The Add file dialog is explained
below. Looking at the other options (2) - "Modify title" changes the
video's title for the menu and "Remove selected video" removes it from
the project. The "Create a slide show" is an amazing option that lets
you add a slide show in the DVD among your videos. It will be further
explained in a future guide.
Then we have the
editing options
(3). "Cut a part of this film" is pretty obvious that allows you to cut
parts that you don't want from the file, "Define chapters" sets the
chapters of the video (this is where the DVD player stops when you
press "Next" in your controller), and "Subtitle management" allows you
to add external subtitles to your film. Finally there is the "Video
effects" option which allows you to apply some interesting effects like
Delogo (remove a logo from a certain area of the video - for example a
TV station logo from the corner) or denoise (that could improve video
quality). You can also change the brightness of your video if you find
it to be bad.
In the Other (4) section you can add
an
introduction video that will play before the menu and "Force reencode"
of MPEG videos that ManDVD may think that are already DVD ready but
generate problems.
When you are done with adding all
your video
you can click Next. See below for an explanation of the add file dialog
before moving to the next step. |  |
This
is the dialog you will see after selecting which file to add. First of
all you should set a title (1) for this video. This title will show
within ManDVD but in the DVD menu as well. Another cool option is the
ability to add a button to the menu using an image from the video. (2)
To do so select "Extract an image from the video". A small media player
will start playing your video. Click the camera icon you can see in the
bottom right corner when you find the image you want. Then it will be
saved and loaded here as the button for that video. You can also "Edit
with The Gimp" - if The Gimp is installed of course - in case you need
to add some effects to it or put some text in there to make your menu
look better.
Finally
before clicking OK and adding the video you can add some delay to the
video or the audio in case they don't match (3) (usually you won't have
to use that option at all). |
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In
this step you can customize the DVD menu. Your first choice is the
background (1). You can either add a picture, just a color or a video
for an animated background. From my experienced a nice background image
makes a good menu as adding a video makes it too messy while a simple
color makes it look too poor. After adding an image you can change some
simple settings (2) like rotating it or changing the colors. Next stop
is the font settings (3). Here you can choose which font to use, its
size as well as the color of the text by default, when selected and
when clicked. Finally you can add a song as a background (4) and select
if it will play once or loop for ever.
When you are
done with... pimping your menu click Next and go to Step 4. |
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Next
comes the button placement. First you need to double click on the video
you want to add to the menu (1). Note that if you generated an image
button in Step 2 that image will appear, if not just a text with the
title of the video. Next you should set the size of the button using
the sliders (2) as well as its place using the other two sliders on the
top and left side. When you are done placing your button select
"Confirm button position" (3).
Each video in your project must
have a menu entry, and then you can click Next and move to the next
step. |
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You
are finally able to create your video. First of all you can set the
Execution priority (3). Set it to full if you plan not to use the PC or
just do light tasks, lower it if you want to use the PC normally (it
takes more time though). Next select the video format (4) between 4/3
and 16/9. You may also want to have a look at the Options (5) even
though the defaults work fine. The options window is explained below.
Now
you can encode your video by selecting "Generate DVD structure" (1).
This can take from a few minutes to a few hours depending on the length
of your DVD and the speed of your computer.
| Keep in mind that when you have a 64bit CPU, using an AMD64
distro can give you a huge performance gain. As I have both 32bit and
64bit versions of Ubuntu installed and an AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+ I did a
small benchmark, encoding the same project (about 90 minutes of XviD)
in both environments. The i386 platform took one hour and 5
minutes while in AMD64 I was finished in 40 minutes. Quite a huge
difference if you encode videos often don't you think? |
After
the DVD is created you have a few extra options (2). First of all you
should "Watch the result" to make sure everything is OK. Afterwards you
can burn using ManDVD, move your project to burn it with K3b (if it is
installed of course) or create an ISO image to burn later. Burning
right away works fine so the rest options are there just to give you a
choice, for example K3b offer much more options than ManDVD itself in
burning. In the screen below I am burning my DVD using ManDVD: | 
| | Finally
here is the options window: |
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These
are some options you can change before encoding, most importantly the
video bitrate. (1). 5000kb/s is a good default setting. Change it only
if you want to fit more video than 2+ hours on the DVD. Next your can
select some options for the subtitles (2). Something that you may need
if you are using special characters in your subtitles is to change the
charset to utf8 (for example for Greek or Kyrilic letters). Finally you
can select if you want to deinterlace the video (use it if you see
horizontal lines in the encoded video - in 99% of the cases you
shouldn't need it though) and if the DVD player will display the menu
or start playing the first video when the disc is loaded.
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I
hope that after reading the guide you feel as excited as I was when I
first tried ManDVD. In case you need any help please use our new Linux
forum to ask, just remember to add your distro info as well as the
console output that you can see when you click "Show/hide console" when
converting. Stay tuned for more Linux guides!
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