Hi,

I have some avi files I downloaded from the internet which I would like to burn unto a DVD disk to play on my DVD player in the living room. How could I do that? (the conversion, not the burning which I do with growisofs)?

Thanks,

VS

I don't remember completely now, but checkout an app called tovid http://tovid.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
I used it a year ago, it worked very well!

Thanks for the tip - I will try tovid out!

Cheers,

VS

PS: no distro good enough?! Try Debian or gNewSense :-)

Bummer,

Here is what I get:

mplayer MISSING!
mencoder MISSING!
mplex MISSING!
mpeg2enc MISSING!
yuvfps MISSING!
yuvdenoise MISSING!
ppmtoy4m MISSING!
mp2enc MISSING!
jpeg2yuv MISSING!
ffmpeg MISSING!

I only have dial-up so getting all that is not a real option. Besides, mplayer has non free software binaries which I don't want to use.

Isn't there some smaller command line utility which could simple convert avi to mpeg (from the tovid doc it is my impression that mepgs can be read by DVD players)?

All you need is mplayer (and no, it does not by default use non-free software) which is 8.0M as source and won’t take too long with dial-up.

The gentoo wiki is a great source for this type of thing
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Create_a_DVD:Encode

ffmpeg and dvdauthor might be the least complicated method. Tovid is great however there is much to install if you want to use all it's features. I highly recommend it generally.

btw I believe some players can read avi directly. Are you sure your player doesn't have this ability ?

yes, I got the cheapest player I could find and it does not read avi (nor can it read DL-DVDs among other things).

as for mplayer itself my repos do not have it but only kmplayer. does anyone know if that would make the trick or should I get the mplayer source somewhere? (which might be a headache since my man distro now is gNewSense, a 100% free version of Ubuntu).

I see you are using Mepis. Does Mepis come with mplayer by default? If yes, I could use it in a live-CD mode, fetch the rather small tovid and convert my stuff without having to affect my main hard-disk installed distro?

Sorry for the delay replying. Busy earning the groceries and other such nonsense.

Yes, non-gui version by default. The codecs and mp3 ability must be added post install on recent mepis.

Add tovid to a live cd? Not easily afaik. It would be best to use a live cd that includes tovid. Not sure if one exists.

However this raises an interesting question. I downloaded a 7 minute avi to the hardrive from Google Video and encoded it to mpeg using a live cd. Mepis 3.3.1 for the live cd and the ffmpeg method from the link I provided earlier for encoding.

Why Mepis 3.3.1 ? It has usable media right out the box. A bit of a rarity. Later versions of Mepis do not include some "restricted" items.

2 questions of my own ;

1) What is this gNewSense thing and why are you using something that prevents doing some basic tasks? Not to lazy to Google, just curious of your perspective.


2) Does any one reading this do (re)encoding from live cd? It seemed to work okay on a short video. Not sure how well it would work with something larger.

The short answer is:

www.gnewsense.org/
www.fsf.org/news/gnewsense
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20070108#review
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNewSense
and
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/

My more personal answer is: I used to be a win32 software developer and I 'ran into' GNU/Linux kind of by chance - I was offered a GNU/Linux sysadminning course for free which I took. After some initial difficulties, I really figured out how vastly superior GNU/Linux is to Windows or Mac, so I switched (with initially some double booting to stay on the 'safe side') to 'Linux' (as I would have said then) for purely technical reasons: I thought it was the better system. Then I began reading more about it. I read about the history of the GPL and the GNU project, and I listened to more and more lectures by Richard Stallman. I slowly came to value the values of the GNU/FSF/RMS/GPL/etc more than I valued the technical capabilities of the GNU/Linux operating system. I began by using Mandrake 7.2 and other versions until Mdk10. Then, through Knoppix, Kanotix, Knoppix-STD and DSL I slowly began looking into Debian which I eventually fully adopted and which I still use today. But when gNewSense came out I really wanted to use a fully 100% free system not 'even if' but *because* it was not as 'capable' as the original Ubuntu: for me freedom is not way more important than technical capability.

I know what most people reading this will think, in particular in the USA: hippie, communist, kibbutznik, FSF zealot, etc. Frankly, to each his own. For some people freedom is the right to use nVidia drivers and winmodems, for others its graphic acceleration or Skype, and it is fine by me. My own idea of freedom, at age 43, has become to use only truly free sofware. And if it makes me look like an hippie/communist/kibbutznik/FSF zealot in the eyes of others - fine (-: besides, some of it is correct: I am an FSF and EFF member :-)

I would add that in reality I have yet to encounter a 'basic task' which Debian or gNewSense would not be able to do. Mostly I am limited with my dial-up (not a reflection of some strange choice, but of the difficulty of having a family of 5 living off one income). I have compared gNewSense to Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, FreeBSD, Kanotix, Debian, Mandrake, DSL and many others and frankly I do not see much of a 'loss' of any capability at all. But even if gNewSense was really more limited in what it can do I would use it (alongside Debian which I find by far the best distro ever made, technically speaking).

I hope this answers your question.

Kind regards,

VS

I have some information Here that may be of interest to you. It basically needs mencoder (part of mplayer) and ffmpeg and a few other small tools.

Run the relevant command (I know they are long, but they are not that hard) and it will convert your AVI file to a DVD. This takes some time, but I have always got an excellent end result.

One thing that is interesting me Vees, is that you won't use "non-free" software, however you have downloaded a movie off the internet...

--Ian

Thanks for the detailed reply. gNewSense is quite new, possibly the reason I had not heard of it before,

Good lord no! Some of those terms have been distorted well beyond their true meaning. In fact I respect your position, while not sharing it in entirety.

Absolutely. I'll admit the question was deliberately worded to get a response. Apologies for putting you on the defensive.

Yes, thank you.

Nobody reading has views on using a live cd for encoding? I'm despearately short on hard drive space at the moment so a more thorough test will need to wait. :-(

btw: I think iball intended to point you to the link in his signature.

edit// On a related note, there is a debian package named vrms. This stands for, believe it or not, virtual richard m. stallman. To quote in part from the man page;

It looks to see what's been installed from the non-free tree.

Howdi,

I fail to see the connectio between free vs proprietary software and movies downloaded of the net. Could you please explain?

Thanks,

VS

yep, and as any self-respecting 'foam-at-his/her-mouth-FSF-zealot' I already installed on my machines. Due to some strange quirk it reports:

gnupg-doc GNU Privacy Guard documentation
ttf-gentium Gentium TrueType font

2 non-free packages, 0.1% of 1379 installed packages.



But anyways - while I have immense respect for RMS, I go the the extreme of being upset at 0.1% non-free stuff. I used Kanotix for years and it had, if I remember, something like 2% non-free which did not give me nigthmares. Heck - I would gladly use Ubuntu given the opportunity, just just that for my own machines I want to try to run all my computers on the two following rules:

1) a yearly IT budget of less than 200 bucks (my Nokia N800 being a one-time exception). I get all my computers from trash, friends, Windoze users who are sure that their 'computer is broken' (which in 90% of the cases means Windoze is screwed-up, in 9% of the cases that it needs a new power pack, and in 1% of the cases something else). I cannibalize parts between old computers, and generally I do not pay anything for my hardware

2) using only 100% free software

Again - this is a *preference* of mine, it makes me feel 'IT free' or, even better, 'corporation independent', but its not like I could not use something else (-: at the library I have been known to sometimes even use XP :-)

While being Debian-based, my Nokia N800 tablet does have proprietary software (as do my phone or my microwave for that matter) and I do not erease it, so for all the foam-at-my-mouth I still have occasional moments of lucidity...

Cheers!

VS

[QUOTE=vees]Hi,

I have some avi files I downloaded from the internet which I would like to burn unto a DVD disk to play on my DVD player in the living room. How could I do that? (the conversion, not the burning which I do with growisofs)?

Thanks,

sanjay kumar saroj
155/3

Sanjay - do you have a question?

Answers to the OP's question have already been provided, for using both GUI and CLI.

--Ian