Burn AVI to DVD on UbuntuLinux
Source: http://www.shedworx.com/files/vista-movie-maker-icon.jpg
Earlier today, a colleague dropped by with an AVI video that he needed help burning to DVD. Rather than pull out my Mac, I decided to just see if I could accomplish the job on my Peppermint ICE (Ubuntu running LXDE with some nice modifications). But how to accomplish that?
AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave. Files of this format have .avi extension. Being developed by Microsoft in 1992, it has become so wide spread that many people consider it de facto standard for storing video and audio information on PC.AVI combines audio and video into a single file in a standard container to allow simultaneous playback. It’s advatage is it’s simple architecture, due to which AVI runs on a number of different systems like Windows, Mac’s, Linux, Unix and is supported by all most popular web-browsers. (Source)
I knew how to do this on Mac and Windows…but I hadn’t done it on GNU/Linux.
So, I did what most people do these days…I googled it. And, the first hit, the first link was to these instructions.
Step 1: Install Dependencies for Devede
The first step involved installing the programs needed. I didn’t know what I needed until after I downloaded the program and tried to install it…P-Ice told me what needed to be loaded first, so I did:
sudo apt-get install libfaac0 mencoder mplayer dvdauthor vcdimager apport-hooks-medibuntu
This step went fairly quickly…and now that it’s done, I won’t have to worry about reinstalling this software again.
Step 2: Install Devede
Admittedly, I’d never heard of this program before I read about it online. But the beauty of it is, I didn’t need to. All the instructions were online to get it going along with screenshots, and, for me, that’s the beauty of working free, open source solutions—someone has taken the time to map their journey. Of course, I hope this post adds clarity to that journey in some way (and it does for me).
Download Devede deb installation program from this web site.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-to-convert-AVI-to-DVD-54418.shtml
sudo dpkg -i dev*.deb
Step 3: Setup the DVD Titles and Add Video files
You can read more detailed instructions online, but here’s generally what the program DeVeDe looks like on the inside…surprisingly, it was pretty easy to get it going. Thank goodness.
You can see in the screenshot above what the DeVeDe program looks like. On the left side of the window, you see the titles that appear in your DVD Menu when you play the DVD on your TV. On the right, that’s where you load the video files. What’s neat is that in the Title Properties, you get to control the video files, when they play, etc.
As you can see, the Properties for DVD Menu Item #1 allow you to some measure of control over videos playing. To keep it simple, I set the Part 1 title to play video #1 in the sequence.
This is the window you use to ADD a video. Notice it lets you adjust the volume to 250%, as well as other choices. I didn’t spend a lot of time on this screen…fortunately, it all worked quite well!
This is what success looks like at the end of the process.
Success in this case involved DeVeDe creating a Video DVD ISO file that I could then use a program like Gnomebaker or K3b to burn to DVD media. It worked flawlessly in preparing the file. One of the neat features was the “Adjust disc usage.” The two videos I had to put on ONE DVD ended up being larger than the 4.7 gig DVD I had to burn them on. After I clicked the “Adjust disc usage” the video files were adjusted to fit on the DVD media…I have no idea how I would have made the adjustment otherwise, so I’m glad it took care of that for me!
Overall, DeVeDe made the process of burning AVI to DVD media quite painless. Rendering took about 52 minutes, burning to media about 19 minutes at 2x (speed).
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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure