[Beds] Digital Camcorder choice for Linux

[Ben Bacarisse]

<aside>
I see that you, Neil, are the list maintainer, so can reply and at the
same time apologise for previously trying to send this using an
un-registered address!
</aside>

On Thu, 2005-05-26 at 21:59 +0100, Neil Darlow wrote:
> I expect the video capture/transcode/edit/burning process and toolchain will 
> be the biggest challenge to producing good results. I was really looking for 
> feedback on this area of things from within the group and hoping I wouldn't 
> be breaking new ground.

Well, I can confirm that the tools exist and work since I have got DV
video from my Panasonic DV camera, onto a DVD and been able to play it
on a domestic DVD player but it was not all plain sailing.  VCD (S or
otherwise) is also possible but I did not find it any easier.

The steps I used are:

1. Transcode using:
   ffmpeg -target pal-dvd -deinterlace -i capture.avi capture.mpg

2. Demux and remux to get the VOBUs expected by dvdauthor [1]:
   dvb-mplex -t DVD -o capture.vob capture.mpg

3. Make the right files, menus, etc:
   dvdauthor -o output-dir -x dvd-description.xml

4. Burn:
   growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/hdc -dvd-video output-dir 

I did not think that k3b had anything to offer in that area yet (except
of course the burning), but I am a GNOMEite so I am not up to date
there.  For step 2 I used to use mpgdemux [2] followed by mplex -f 8 [3]
but the de-muxing sometimes crashed so I now use multiplexing tool from
the confusingly comprehensive dvb-mpegtools [4] suite of programs.  At
step 3, ignore all the errors about audio discontinuities.  I don't know
what these are about but they seem to be unimportant (in fact I now use
a script to grep them out so I can spot errors that *do* matter).

I would be grateful to anyone who can tell me I am making a real dogs
dinner out of this and that I should use [insert name of point & click
video editing & DVD authoring program here].  I tried the same job using
iMovie/iDVD on a Mac and it took a few minutes to figure out how to do
it!

Of course the command-line/scripting way does have its advantages (I am
an shell addict).  E.g. I now have a script that makes a DVD menu from a
set of captured images (available on request).

Refs:
[1] http://dvdauthor.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://mpgtx.sourceforge.net/
[3] http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net
[4] http://www.metzlerbros.org/dvb/ 
-- 
Ben.
-- 
Ben.