There are all sorts of programs out there which claim to let you author 
video DVDs. (E.g., K3b claims to be able to do this - but on closer 
inspection, it only has the ability to write files to disk. You have to 
somehow create those files yourself first.) There are freebie scripts on 
the Internet and there are shareware and commercial programs that can 
supposedly do this.

When I bought my original DVD drive, because it was Hewlett Packard it 
came bundled with some authoring software that nobody's ever heard of. 
It works though. Just about. (When you install it, it tries to discover 
whether you have a HP DVD drive in your PC - which I don't, now. You can 
get round it though.)

The package I've got allows you to take multiple AVI files, encoded with 
just about any codec known to Man, and concatenate them, possibly with 
some (rather cheesy) transitions. You can also insert static title 
frames and so on. And you can create a very simple disk menu to play the 
various chapters. Unfortunately, there's a split-second pause between 
chapters (or maybe that's just my mum's DVD player, I'm not sure).

What do other people use for putting DVDs together?

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> What do other people use for putting DVDs together?

Like you I used to use some commercial program that came with my DVD player 
(don't remember the name).

Whilst I haven't done anything like that recently, I heard from a 
not-very-geeky person that they used DVDFlick and made a proper DVD using 
it.  Might be worth a look, it's open source too if that's your cup of tea.

There's a quick guide here I found:

http://www.dvdflick.net/guide/index_en.html

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> What do other people use for putting DVDs together?

I've been using DVDlab quite a lot. Not free though but quite powerful with
respect to menus and playlists.
But you need to have the videos converted to DVD standard beforehand. It doesn't
re-encode anything.

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Aydan wrote:

> I've been using DVDlab quite a lot. Not free though but quite powerful with
> respect to menus and playlists.

OK.

> But you need to have the videos converted to DVD standard beforehand. It doesn't
> re-encode anything.

Ah, but MPEG-2 encoders (and decoders) almost always cost money for some 
reason. ;-)

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On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 14:16:49 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> What do other people use for putting DVDs together?

ManDVD on Linux.  I don't have very complex needs (in fact, since I 
started using the PS3 as a streaming media server, I haven't needed to 
burn video DVDs at all)

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> ManDVD on Linux.  I don't have very complex needs

OK. I'll take a look.

> I started using the PS3 as a streaming media server

What does that even *mean*?

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: 4bd59242$1@news.povray.org...
> What do other people use for putting DVDs together?
For very simple stuff Windows Movie Maker. Click click click, done.
For more complex editing and DVD authoring:  Sony Vegas Movie Studio 
(Platinum version). IIRC for the non-pro user on Windows it's a choice 
between Adobe Premiere Elements, Pinnacle Studio and Sony Vegas. The 
Premiere demo just crashed, I didn't like Pinnacle too much so Vegas was the 
best choice. Note that these kind of apps are *** very *** complex, they are 
not shining models of clean / friendly UI,  and have a steep learning curve. 
Vegas and Pinnacle are very powerful for the price though (about 60 euros 
for Vegas).

G.

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Invisible wrote:
> What do other people use for putting DVDs together?

At the time I bought it a few years ago, the uLead DVD creator was the only 
one that did B-frames (apparently). It's "normal quality" far outdid the 
"best quality" of any of the other packages I tried.

Nowadays, Windows comes with things that will make DVDs, I think, yes? Maybe 
not, I don't remember, but I know I processed the individual videos with 
Windows Movie Maker and I think the DVD maker burned them.

Play around with it if you've upgraded to a version of Windows that has it.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:10:08 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
>> ManDVD on Linux.  I don't have very complex needs
> 
> OK. I'll take a look.
> 
>> I started using the PS3 as a streaming media server
> 
> What does that even *mean*?

It means "I had a brain fart" - I actually meant that our PS3 accesses a 
streaming media sever, not that it *is* a streaming media server.

So instead of burning DVDs of videos, I just stream the videos to the PS3 
for playback.

Jim

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Gilles Tran wrote:
> "Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de groupe de
> discussion
> : 4bd59242$1@news.povray.org...
>> What do other people use for putting DVDs together?
> For very simple stuff Windows Movie Maker. Click click click, done.
> For more complex editing and DVD authoring:  Sony Vegas Movie Studio
> (Platinum version). IIRC for the non-pro user on Windows it's a choice
> between Adobe Premiere Elements, Pinnacle Studio and Sony Vegas. The
> Premiere demo just crashed, I didn't like Pinnacle too much so Vegas was
> the best choice. Note that these kind of apps are *** very *** complex,
> they are
> not shining models of clean / friendly UI,  and have a steep learning
> curve. Vegas and Pinnacle are very powerful for the price though (about 60
> euros for Vegas).
> 

WMM can create DVDs? That's news to me. Last time I tried, it burned a CD 
with a proprietary format (XML, JPEG thumbnails, and the video in WMV) which 
it claims is a "standard" but it's not supported by any played I tried, 
software or hardware.

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