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besson3c · Feb 22, 2011, 11:14 PM

Every once in a while I want to take a random transcoded video file of mine and burn it to DVD in the DVD format so that I can watch this movie on a friend's DVD player, or have a backup in case their DVD player doesn't support playing videos of various formats. I don't care at all about fancy DVD menus or anything like that, I just want it to work and be simple, and free (since I don't do this very often).

So far the best solution I'm aware of happens to be tovid on Linux (I see this is available in Macports as well). Are there other options? I guess I'm happy with tovid, but I'm curious as to what other options might be, I wasn't able to turn up anything definitive in my Google searches.

P · Feb 23, 2011, 02:36 AM

FFmpegX is what I used back when I bothered with this stuff.

TETENAL · Feb 23, 2011, 03:30 AM

iDVD (came with your Mac) "Magic iDVD"

besson3c · Feb 23, 2011, 08:50 AM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

iDVD (came with your Mac) "Magic iDVD"

Doesn't that only work with DV video fed to it from iMovie? This has to work with Xvid, DivX, and other random video formats....

besson3c · Feb 23, 2011, 08:53 AM

Originally Posted by P

FFmpegX is what I used back when I bothered with this stuff.

I thought ffmpeg will only create DVD ready MPEG-2 video, but won't actually create VIDEO_TS folders/DVD menus?

Another question comes to mind: how would I burn a VIDEO_TS folder into a DVD in OS X, other than "growisofs"?

P · Feb 23, 2011, 09:10 AM

You can make a DVD without a menu - it will just play the movie when you insert the disc. FFmpegX is not just ffmpeg - it's a a GUI wrapper of ffmpeg and a few more things and will create the disc image for you to drop onto Disk Utility. I also had a tiny app that took a VIDEO_TS folder as input and created a UDF image as output, but I'll have to get home to check what it was called - if it even exists anymore.

besson3c · Feb 23, 2011, 09:30 AM

Ahh, I didn't realize that, thanks. FFmpegX looks pretty cool!

FFMpegX will also convert VIDEO_TS folders to UDF images.

Spheric Harlot · Feb 23, 2011, 09:45 AM

DVD Imager will turn a VIDEO_TS folder into a burnable disk image.

Have you actually TRIED iDVD?

besson3c · Feb 23, 2011, 10:51 AM

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot

DVD Imager will turn a VIDEO_TS folder into a burnable disk image.

Have you actually TRIED iDVD?

No, but I Googled using iDVD for this purpose and my findings were as stated (although what I found certainly could have been inaccurate or applied only to an older version, IIRC it was some forum post somewhere). What video formats does iDVD/iMovie support, other than DV?

While this would be interesting to know, I'm more interested in other tools that will burn very small and simple DVD menus, because I'd rather devote video quality to the DVD video rather than some silly cookie cutter DVD menu where the quality of the source video warrants this.

P · Feb 23, 2011, 11:11 AM

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot

DVD Imager will turn a VIDEO_TS folder into a burnable disk image.

That's the app I was thinking about. Thanks, those things drive me insane.

ibook_steve · Feb 23, 2011, 12:20 PM

Of course, there's also Toast.

Steve

besson3c · Feb 23, 2011, 03:49 PM

Originally Posted by ibook_steve

Of course, there's also Toast.

Steve

Which is not free... I don't do this enough to justify that purchase, but thanks!

FFmpegX does everything I want, sort of. I was able to do a functioning DVD conversion using the mpeg2enc encoder (the ffmpeg one didn't work for me). My only complaint was that it didn't create chapter markings like Tovid does. Maybe there is a way to do this in FFmpegX, but at a quick glance I don't see a way.

Still, I can probably live without chapter markings in most cases, and I can always install Tovid on my OS X machine, I was mostly just wondering what sort of tools might exist for making this quick and easy on the Mac side.

mduell · Feb 23, 2011, 06:50 PM

VisualHub (discontinued) will do this.

TETENAL · Feb 24, 2011, 05:47 AM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Doesn't that only work with DV video fed to it from iMovie? This has to work with Xvid, DivX, and other random video formats....

I think it works with anything that QuickTime can read. I have used it with MP4-files, so it definitely doesn't require DV video. Nor does it require iMovie.

besson3c · Feb 24, 2011, 11:18 AM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

I think it works with anything that QuickTime can read. I have used it with MP4-files, so it definitely doesn't require DV video. Nor does it require iMovie.

I'll give it a try the next time the file is QT playable... I don't think this video in question was.