I'm looking for the Linux equivalent of TMPG DVD Author. Specifically I want to edit/re-author an existing DVD (from a set top DVD recorder). I understand that TMPG works under Wine although I haven't tried it yet. I'd prefer to use a native Linux app. It seems like the ones I've looked at are for converting to/from DVD format as opposed to editing an existing DVD. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Most DVD tools in linux are a bit primitive.

dvdunauthor
spuunmux

and the un-un's to reauthor. Probably pretty useless to a non-techie though.

The last time I looked at dvdunauthor, maybe about a year or so ago, it was not yet really symmetrical in operation. That is, you couldn't unauthor a disk, then use the output directly to build a new disk. And the dvdauthor project is rather slow in development, so I doubt this has changed much recently.

I have successfully used spumux/spuunmux to extract subtitles and reinsert them into a new video stream. There were some rendering bugs in the last version I used though. I had to use a modified version to do it cleanly.

(spu(un)mux is part of the dvdauthor package, by the way).

So, no, I don't think there's any single program that will do it at this time. I suppose it might be possible to use dvdunauthor to extract the individual elements, modify them manually, then use dvdauthor (or one of the gui programs that use it as a backend, like dvdstyler or qdvdauthor) to build a new dvd from them.

Take a look at Bombono DVD | Author DVD Freely - http://www.bombono.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Home

and perhaps also> Transmageddon - http://www.linuxrising.org/transmageddon/index.html

(2)ManDVD is by far the best DVD software for Linux, but you will have to redo your menu, you can't unauthor with that one.

The utility dvdauthor is used to create an DVD video disc. It is the only program in Linux that programs uses when they are creating menus or DVD video discs. dvdauthor is not useless to a non-geek because it can create a basic DVD video disc with out a lot of options or setting up a file.

The program that can re-author a DVD video disc is K9Copy. It copies everything including the menu information and it can create a DVD5 or 4.7 GB DVD video disc.

The utility spuumux is used to extract the subtitles from an MPEG-1/MPEG-2 stream.

Is there a Vegas equivalent? How good is Cinelerra?

Thanks for all of the suggestions. Bombono looks promising based on it's web site.