Tip #34: Creating DVDs with Free Tools in Windows XP

Today's tip is on creating DVDs from AVI files, WMV files, and other video file types... The quality of the DVD produced will depend on the source input file, but with a high quality source file the results should meet or exceed those of many point-and-click DVD solutions...

The tools we'll need to produce this DVD are mencoder and dvdauthor... Mencoder is part of the MPlayer package and can be downloaded from here... The Win32 port of dvdauthor can be downloaded from here (0.6.9 is the most current Win32 build at this time)... Since both of these tools were originally developed for Linux, and have been ported to Windows, the instructions given below should work equally as well, if not better, on a Linux box...

After you have downloaded and installed both mencoder and dvdauthor, you're ready to start building your DVD... The DVD created in this example will not have menus or chapters, and should autostart when inserted into a DVD player...

First off, we'll need to transcode the source video into a DVD-compliant MPEG2 format... We'll do this by using the following command:
(Note: This command should all be on a single line...)

mencoder source.avi -ovc lavc -oac lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:
vbitrate=5000:keyint=18:acodec=ac3:abitrate=192:aspect=4/3:
trell:mbd=2:precmp=2:subcmp=2:cmp=2:dia=10:predia=-10:cbp:
mv0:vqmin=1:lmin=1:dc=10 -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd
-vf scale=720:480,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000
-ofps 30000/1001 -o "outputfile.mpg"

The transcoding process takes a relatively long time, even on a recent machine, so you may want to start this in the evening before going to sleep... source.avi and outfilefile.mpg should be changed to reflect your input file, and desired output file... This command also assumes a 4:3 NTSC DVD... If you're converting for PAL, change the keyint to 15, change the -ofps to 25, and also change the scale= to 720:576...

After you have created the DVD compliant MPEG2 file, you will now need to create the DVD structure using dvdauthor, using the following command:

dvdauthor -v 4:3,720x480 -t -f "yourfile.mpg" -o "C:\output_dir"

The above command will generate the file structure for the DVD, as well as build the necessary VOB files from your MPEG file...

And finally, we just need to generate a TOC (table of contents) for our DVD using the following command:

dvdauthor -T -o "C:\output_dir"

Make certain that the output directory you specify in the command above is the same as the previous command...

You should now have a VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS directory in your specified output directory... These directories and their contents can now be burned to a DVD using a burning application of your choice, and the resulting DVD should be playable on pretty much any DVD player...

Please leave a comment if you have any questions...