README

dvdauthor
=========

dvdauthor is a program that will generate a DVD-Video movie from a valid
MPEG-2 stream that should play when you put it in a DVD player.

To start you need MPEG-2 files that contain the necessary DVD-Video VOB
packets. These can be generated with FFmpeg, or by by passing `-f 8` to `mplex`.

How to Use
----------

There are 3 steps to building the DVD directory structure on your HDD.

1. Delete a previously authored dvd

        dvddirdel [-o dir]

   To guard against mistakes, this will only delete files and subdirectories
   that look like part of a DVD-Video structure.

2. Create your titlesets

        dvdauthor [-o dir] [audio/video/subpicture options] [chapters]

   To create 1 chapter per mpeg, simply do

        dvdauthor [-o dir] [a/v/s options] chap1.mpg chap2.mpg chap3.mpg...

   To manually specify chapters, use the '--chapters' option

        dvdauthor [-o dir] [a/v/s options] -c chap1a.mpg chap1b.mpg -c chap2a.mpg chap2b.mpg ....

   To add chapters every fifteen minutes, do

        dvdauthor [-o dir] [a/v/s options] -c 0,15:00,30:00,45:00,1:00:00,1:15:00... longvideo.mpg

   Call dvdauthor for each titleset you want to create.  Note that
   due to the DVD-Video standard, all audio, video, and subpicture options
   must be set once for the entire titleset; i.e. you cannot mix PAL
   and NTSC video in the same titleset. For that you must generate
   separate titlesets.

   Run dvdauthor -h to see the audio, video, and subpicture options.
   Note that dvdauthor can autodetect most parameters except the
   language.

3. Create the table of contents

        dvdauthor -T [-o dir]

Voila! You now have a DVD-Video directory structure that will probably
work! You can now write this out to your DVD, mini-DVD (CD), or just
play it from your HDD. To generate the UDF image to burn to DVD, use
`mkisofs` and pass it the `-dvd-video` option.


See also
--------

### FFmpeg

See http://www.ffmpeg.org/.

Note that packages included with your distro are almost certainly out
of date. Always use the latest version from the Git repository or the
latest release.

### mjpegtools

See http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net.

It includes `mplex` for building an MPEG-2 system stream with hooks
for DVD-Video navigation packets.

### mpucoder's site on DVD specifications

See http://www.mpucoder.com/DVD/.

It contains details on the DVD-Video format

### *Inside DVD-Video* on Wikibooks

See http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Inside_DVD-Video.

This is a work-in-progress wikibook designed to contain all publicly
available information on DVD-Video.
        an attempt to document everything that is publicly known about the
        DVD-Video spec in a readable form