[SWLUG] Avi splitter and burner

[Justin Mitchell]

On Sun, 2006-04-02 at 01:57 +0100, AlunPD wrote:
> I do a lot of my work these days in Linux and I am by no means realy
> proficent in the OS but prefere using it, however I am totally stumped when
> it comes to burning AVI files, as the burning programme K3B does not seem to
> want to do anything for me it wont recognise the extension and tells me that
> it will only burn MPEG files,
If your trying to make a video dvd or video cd then thats
understandable, dvd uses mpeg2, vcd uses mpeg1, afaik.


>  so I have to transfere the files to windows
> and then use AVI splitter to make the files smaller so that I can then burn
> them to a CD the other thing the Avi splitter does is convert the file into
> something that the burner can recognise also.
To convert video between formats, use either ffmpeg or transcode, both
have an awful lot of options, so will be a bit bewildering to start
with, but they tend to have reasonable defaults, so just start by
specifying the output format you want and work up from there.
ffmpeg is very popular, so probably in your distro 'yast -i ffmpeg' and
see if it finds it.

theres also lots of frontends around to make tasks like ripping and
making dvds and stuff easier. eg tovid

You can even edit your movie using programs like kino or cinelerra

> 
> Is there a programme that I can get in Linux that will do the job of
> splitting them and then allow me to burn them to CD, I have searched the web
> in Google linux and when I find a file that says it is for Linux when I go
> to download it all i get is an .EXE file.
Ah so it is a video cd (vcd) your trying to make.

> 
> The other problem I have is I only know how to open an RPM file and that
> installed through YAST I use SUSE.

firstly, try to find a ready built RPM file first, use sites like
rpmfind.net to help.

if you cant find a binary rpm for your version of distro, then try to
find a src.rpm, and do 'rpmbuild --rebuild blah.src.rpm' and it should
(fingers crossed) spit out a binary rpm for your machine.

> I do not have the faintest how to compile or to install a programme from a
> .tar extension.
if your lucky, its a tar that also contains rpm creation config, in
which case:  rpmbuild -tb  blah.tar.gz    will create an rpm, if that
fails immediately then it wasnt one of those :)

the last resort, and i say that because it means you will have no record
of what and where things were installed, so cant uninstall or upgrade it
easily, is to build the program youself.

tar zxvf blah.tar.gz   
will unpack all its contents (jxvf for a tar.bz2 file).

in there you should find some kind of README or INSTALL file that tells
you how to build and install the program, typically its this:
./configure
make
make install