Is there a utility for converting MP4 files to DVD-Video format? It's H264, AAC.

Hi there,

think of this as a two-step process.

Step one is to convert the video material. DVD requires:

• A video stream in MPEG1 or MPEG2 at a resolution of 720x576 and 25 fps (PAL) or 704x480 and 30fps (NTSC)
• A video bitrate not exceeding 6Mbps average or 10Mbps peak
  EDIT: 6Mbps average is just a rule of thumb, not a necessity.
• An audio stream in MPEG1 or MPEG2 audio, alternatively in AC3 or dts

So you'd probably convert your video to plain MPEG2 video and audio. This can be done with popular programs like Avidemux or even Videolan Player (VLC). My impression is that Avidemux produces better results, as its codecs and parameters seem to be optimized for quality, while Videolan seems optimized for speed.

As a result of this, you'll get an MPEG video file of a few GB.

Step two is to wrap this MPEG video file into a DVD compliant program stream, break it up in GB-sized VOB files and create the necessary IFO file(s) along with that. However, I don't have any experience or recommendation about that step - I've never done it. But maybe someone else stumbles upon this thread who has. The appropriate search term is "DVD authoring".

Step three is to ask yourself: What for? Most today's DVD players can also play MPEG4 files directly, so the first thing I'd try is to simply write the video file to a blank DVD and see how far I get that way. :-)

[X] Doc CPU

DeVeDe, its very easy, a single program that will convert most video formats to DVD and other formats like VCD.

http://www.devede.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeVeDe

Most DVD players can play Xvid .avis no problem (MPEG-4 part 2) but not H.264 .mp4 (MPEG-4 part 10).

There might be a few DVD players that can play H.264, but I've neer seen one. To play H.264s blu-ray players normally work.

Thanks, Doc CPU and cascade9. I'll try this DeVeDe.

I built DeVeDe and all of its dependencies. Slackbuilds says they are:
dvdauthor
vcdimager
ffmpeg

However, when authoring a title I have, it says:

ERROR: Can't add the buttons to the menu. I seems a bug of SPUMUX.

But neither is SPUMUX in my system nor is it a devede dependency according to Slackbuilds! What can I do?

I use tovid myself.
http://tovid.wikia.com/wiki/Tovid_Wiki

Tovid can create a DVD compatible filesystem of your video files. The tovid manpage has many options to create a customize dvd menu as well.

Here is a sample code to create an animated thumbnail menu and dvd filesystem.

This will take your video file and create a dvd filesystem in the directory dvd.

To test your dvd created filesystem before burning to disc, type

vlc dvd

or

mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device dvd/

To burn the dvd filesystem unto a disc , type

growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd -dvd-video dvd/

/dev/dvd is the location of the dvd drive. Replace /dev/dvd with your path to the dvd
drive.

PS: Tovid is not limited to just one video, you can add more videos and it will create animated thumbnails to select from.

The thing is that I don't have video files, but an MP4 file, plus an SRT (subtitles) file. So I need a utility to do the conversion.

DVD Styler is another one.

Spumux is (or should be) part of dvdauthor.

Did you install the full DVDAutor suite?
Might be an issue with your "Slackbuild".
While being optional when building dvdauthor, it's certainly a dependency if you wish to create subtitles with it.

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -target dvd video.mpg