I have a video recorded from my home digital TV tuner. It is in MPEG-TS format (filenames ending in '.ts'), comprising four files of 2.1Gb and one of a few hundred Mb. I am trying to shrink it to fit on a DVD and author a playable DVD from it.

I used avidemux to convert from MPEG-TS format to MPEG_PS (naming the output files with '.mpg' suffix).

I used ffmpeg to reduce the kbps of the multiple .mpg files, to make the whole movie fit into 4.1Gb. K3b is happy with the files' individual sizes and combined size, so burning should not be an issue.

Now I want to author a DVD from the shrunk .mpg files.

I googled and came up with dvdauthor. This requires the input mpg files to contain VOB information. Following the guidelines at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...e_to_DVD_Video, I created an xml file, of the form given at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...s.2C_One_movie. I then ran dvdauthor as suggested at the link just mentioned, which gave a slew of errors:and ending with:Another google search turned up the need to run mplex, to insert VOB sectors (?) for dvdauthor to fill in. I installed mplex and ran it over the first of my mpg files, resulting in further problems:A google search of this error turned up http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawik...title=FAQMplex, which indicates I need to demultiplex the audio and video and suggested using mpgtx.

I installed mpgtx and ran it successfully over my first mpg file, producing two files 'chunk-0.m2v' and 'chunk-0.mp2'.

Now I am trying to run mplex again, to insert the VOB sectors, so I can run dvdauthor.

I tried, but received similar errors to before:.

What have I done wrong? Is there an easier way to get to my destination? Am I at least on the right track?

I use MythArchive to do this. It transcodes videos into the proper format, creates the DVD menu structure, and outputs an iso file that I can test and burn to DVD. HandBrake is also useful for transcoding files that MythArchive doesn't like.

Thanks, granth, I appreciate your taking the time to reply.

I'll look into HandBrake and MythArchive. Oh joy - more manuals to read and understand ....

Well, what an interesting week! It has taken me all this time to get MythArchive up and running, but it has been (almost) worth the struggle.

For anyone following this thread, MythArchive allows me to select one or more input videos, of any of the formats I have tried (presumably a wider range than I have to experiment with) and produce a playable video DVD, or iso image of same, all in one process. It takes care of converting the format if needed, adjusting the size (shrinking) if needed and breaking the input into appropriately sized chunks. Menus etc. are created per user instructions and the whole process is automated: all that is needed is pointing MythArchive at one or more input files and I'm good to go.

To get there, I had to install MythArchive, which requires MythTV (as it is an extension of that package).

MythTV requires a number of dependencies and it needs a running installation of MySQL. On my Fedora system, this is supplied by the MariaDB drop-in replacement, but all commands are identical. I had to enable my MySQL service and start it, before mythbackend could connect:Use the installation instructions to get the back-end database user and tables up and running.

As my computer lacks a TV turner of any kind, I had to fool MythTV into submission, by following the instructions here.

Now I was able to get MythTV running, albeit doing nothing of interest.

Installing MythArchive was easy, as my distro has it packaged. Be aware that it uses a package not brought in by dependency checks: I had to install m2vrequantiser manually, after the first run of MythArchive crashed when trying to shrink my input file to fit on a DVD. (Note: the installed program requires mixed case invocation, being run as the shell command 'M2VRequantiser').

To create the input files for MythArchive, I can use the files generated by my video recorders, either '.ts' files from the USB recorder, or normal DVD VOB files from the disk recorder. As I tend to set my recordings to start a little before the advertised time and end a little after, I use Avidemux to trim unwanted material from my input files. Avidemux has a nice GUI and allows me to concatenate a number of files into a single output file, making it easy to trim the start and end junk from a multi-file movie in one pass. I also manually trim advertisements from the body of the concatenated file, if I have recorded from a commercial broadcast. Note: MythArchive runs a script which purports to cut advertisements from the input automatically, but I have not tried it.

Try using your distro's installer to install any of these packages, as that is simpler than compiling form source code.

Now I have everything working, it is easy to invoke Avidemux for editing and MythArchive (via the MythTV front end) to author a DVD from the resulting file.

What I hate about MythArchive is its dependency upon MythTV. I wish it was available as a stand-alone application, because MythTV takes over the video card and I cannot do any other useful work while MythArchive works away at its authoring job. MythArchive has taken about 2½ hours each time, to create the DVDs I have authored so far and it is frustrating to be unable to use the computer for anything else for this long. I will stick with it, however, because it is so seamless: plug video files in one end and (clank, clank, grind, grind) a DVD or iso image appears out the other end.

My thanks to granth for putting me onto it.

I'm glad to hear you got it working! MythTV can be a beast to wrap your head around, but it's an awesome application.

As for the full-screen problem you're having. I launch mythfrontend from a terminal window. That way, I can Alt-Tab out of it to do other work while MythArchive is humming away.

granth, the Alt-Tab solution is what I was looking for. Thank you very, very much (or, to use a common Australian expression of approval "you little beauty!").