I am looking for something (or collection of tools) that will rip, record (burn), and backup DVDs. I would like to:

1. Preserve DVD menus.
2. Resize DVDs from 9 gig formats to 4.5 (similar to Pinacle Instant Copy).
3. Burn telivison shows onto DVD that will be playable from a 'set-top' DVD player in standard DVD format.
4. Command line is ok.
5. Gui is ok.
6. Be able to write files to DVD.

Most of this I am unfamiliar as to how to do under Knoppmyth. I tried installing dvd::rip (apt-get install video-dvdrip). The dependancies require quite a lot and I wound up unsuccesfully tracing through them. From what I can tell from the gui interface, this will do what I want. Unfortunately, I could not get it working. If anyone has any idea on how to get it working, or an alternative, please let me know.

You can use MythDVD to backup your unencrypted DVDs. As far as I'm aware, no tool will preserve DVD menus. Please search the Myth archive to see how folks are saving thier shows to DVD. It has been discussed a great deal on the mailing list. As I don't have a DVD writer, I cannot provide details. KnoppMyth does provide all the tools you'd need write a DVD.

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

apt-get install video-dvdrip
video-dvdrip: Depends: libgtk-perl but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libgtk-pixbuf-perl but it is not going to be installed
Depends: transcode (>= 2:0.6.6) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: imagemagick but it is not going to be installed
Depends: fping but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libevent-perl but it is not going to be installed

i don't know if those have alot more dependencies, but you might want to start there

Yeah, thats where I got stuck. Then apt-get would not install anything else. It would complian that there were unmet dependancies in earlier installs (basically), recomending that I do an 'apt-get -f install'. Is there a way to clean those previous failed attempts? Until I figure that out, I have been ghosting over a preconfigured somewhat virgin install and starting over from there. But is there a way to delete the cache or previous attempts so that I can move on instead of starting over?

ok well have you tried the apt-get -f install? if you have the same problem as most people have it will be a package libxv or something trying to overwrite files. If this is the case I have detailed in another thread how to force the install of that file and it will put apt-get back into a usable state, however overwriting is dangerous. that particular package doesn't seem to cause any harm, but others might.

also as cesman said I don't know of anything that will preserve menu's particularly not and fit it back on 4Gb. the only program I know of that has this sort of functionality is dvdXcopy for windows.

As for burning dvd's in linux what you are looking for is dvdauthor. it is a command line script, and I only know of one frontend for it that is in early development qdvdauthor, and that does not have a debian package and probably has lots of dependancies, and doesn't work through the mythtv interface.

Found it, thanks! Very helpful. With this method, I was able to install dvdrip and a few other programs (xcdroast, k3b, mostly guis) without problems (so far). I wanted dvdrip, because, from what I read, you can view the command line of what you do. Ideally, I would like to create a script to do the job instead of relying on the gui.



I was hoping that there might be a simple solution to this. I will have to read up on how the dvd menus are structured and find a way of duplicating or emulating the origional. It seems like there might be a way of just copying the raw menu over and re-encode everything else then burn everything back onto dvd. I will have to look into this some more (sometimes things seem easier than they actually are).

If anyone has any ideas on how to grab the menus, please post. In the mean time I will be trudging away at this.

I searched for the tread but could not find it, could you please post the link.


As for DVD backup in windows, try DVD Shrink, it preserve menus and, if too big, shrink it to fit 4.7 gb blank DVD.
[url]http://www.dvdshrink.org/
if Nero is installed on the system, the burning is all automatic.[/url]

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Tyan Trinity 1854S - VIA Apollo Pro 133
P3-1000, 768mb PC-133, GF2 MX400 64mb
Avermedia M179, ATI TV Wonder w/remote, Maxtor 160 gig, DVD burner.R5E50.
Second FE - Thinkpad T22, 900, 384mb. Ubuntu Dapper, Mythtv FE 0.20

well cesmans short version is in this thread
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1487&highlight=dpkg+forceoverwrite

and here's my explanation more generic with warnings and explanation of what it is doing. http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=337&start=30

For transfering recordings from your tv history to dvd+rw, you can do that directly in nuvexport. The only gotcha's are that not all dvd players can handle the format, and you have to pre-format the dvd before you run nuvexport.

I have two stand alone players, an Apex, and a Philups. The Apex does not handle the burned dvd, the Philips does. My iBook recognizes that it is a DVD, but treats it as a data disk. I.e. it loads the dvd player, but won't play the dvd recording, it also opens a file browser. Resulting dvd's do play on my linux box via xine.

pre-formatting the dvd is done with the command:


The only other thing that I would really like to see is the ability to collect several episodes of a series together, and burn them to a single dvd, with a menu that simply allows me to pick which of those episodes I wish to view. I suspect that dvdauthor would give me that option, though I have not gotten to that point yet.

-Rusty

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Master:
- AMD 1800XP on a MSI KT4V motherboard, via KT400 bios
- 120 G Segate Baracuda /, /cache, /myth, swap
- 200 G Segate Baracuda /myth/tv
- 3 Haupauge! WinTV PVR250s
- 19" Daewoo Monitor (1280x1024 ni)

Since we are talking about nuvexport, . . .

The problem I am having is when exporting to DVD it says:


Basically, what is with all the 'disabled' and where can I find 'yuvscaler'? Is this something that I might have messed up with all my installs of DVD writing stuff?

The usual response is to try the command



and see if that makes these options available.

One way this might happen is if you install the DVD+RW drive after you built and installed KnoppMyth, or a CD-R[W] drive.

From what I have been able to tell, the only supported export for dvd at the moment is to dvd+rw. You may have a different experience.

Based upon it's name, I suspect that yuvscaller resizes the frames in a video stream as would be required for many of these formats. So if you have been capturing at 480x480, and wanted to export to a DVD at 720x480, yuvexport would take care of the translations required. Likewise if you wanted to export to VCD at 320x280, it would take care of the translation that way as well.

Ah, but you point out, translations like that are happening for Divx, and some of these other output types as well. Perhaps. They very well may be using completely different tools to take care of similar tasks, but those tools are designed around those outputs, where the vcd, svcd, and dvd outputs are all oriented around mpeg1 and mpeg2 file formats. Strange as it may seem, those are different beasts from mpeg4 and divx formats.

-Rusty

_________________
Master:
- AMD 1800XP on a MSI KT4V motherboard, via KT400 bios
- 120 G Segate Baracuda /, /cache, /myth, swap
- 200 G Segate Baracuda /myth/tv
- 3 Haupauge! WinTV PVR250s
- 19" Daewoo Monitor (1280x1024 ni)