Video Conversion in Linux for DVD Creation

[Hal Duston]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 02:48:09PM +0000, Luke -Jr wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 August 2007, Leo Mauler wrote:
> > A friend of mine recently converted my 3 hour wedding
> > video from VHS to AVI for me.  I've trimmed what I
> > could, but the remaining video is still two and
> > one-half hours long.
> 
> Why are you doing VHS->"AVI"->MPEG-2? Unless your AVI is raw uncompressed 
> video (hundreds of GB, IIRC), doing this is going to lose quite a significant 
> bit of quality.
> 
> > I have Googled for how to fit 2-1/2 hours of AVI video
> > onto a 2 hour DVD.  All I have been able to find is
> > information on how to convert 85 minutes of AVI video
> > into one conventional 4.7GB DVD, which isn't what I'm
> > looking for.
> 
> For something so specific, you obviously just aren't going to find a 
> step-by-step howto. You'll need to just take your numbers and calculate the 
> bitrate you need manually.
> 
> > The mencoder documentation isn't much help either: it doesn't quite tell you
> > which commands affect bitrates and how to set constant bitrates to control
> > file size. 
> 
>        vbitrate=<value>
>               Specify bitrate (pass 1/2) (default: 800).
> 
> Doesn't get much clearer than that...

Use tovid.  It converts AVI files directly to DVD's.  It takes care of all
the arcane obscure options needed to do this.

Thanks,
Hal