[KLUG Members] Digital Video for Linux release

[Bruce Smith]

> Since Bruce said last night that making DVDs on Linux sucks, I can't help but
> post that - http://kino.schirmacher.de/article/static/2 - "Digital Video for
> Linux" - has just made a new release.  Anyone with video experince up to
> checking this out?  

I don't have much experience to speak of, but I'll play with it.

> I'd love for Bruce to be wrong, but really, how often does that happen?

And I'd love for someone to prove me wrong!  :-)

To be more specific about what I said last night:

Suppose I take a program recorded from my MythTV box and burn it to a
DVD.  The first problem I ran into is recording the program with all the
correct bitrates/resolutions/sampling-rates/etc. so it's compatible with
DVD's.  Since I had no luck converting the settings after a program was
recorded, I messed around with Myth's record settings until I got it to
record correct in the first place (more or less).

Next you have to take the Myth file and separate out the audio and video
streams from the file.  Then you have to multiplex them back together. 
(don't ask why, because I'm not 100% sure :)
There are numerous Linux commands to do that.  Then my problem was that
process made the audio out of sync with the video (people's lips talking
didn't match the audio, so it looked like the show was dubbed).  So,
after fighting with a buggy program that made the offset worse, I found
a different program that solved the sync problem.

Now you have a correct mpeg file that you can burn to DVD.  It's not too
bad if all you want to do is burn it straight to DVD so the show plays
as soon as you load it into a DVD player.  But ...

What if I have a bunch of episodes of my favorite half-hour TV show?
It's kind of a waste to burn one half-hour episode per DVD.  It'd be
nice to combine multiple episodes on a single DVD (space is no problem),
and create a menu that allows you to select the episode.  That's where
the "sucks" part REALLY comes in.  Holy crap!  Talk about a pain!!! 
I've read what's required to do this, but I've never actually worked up
the courage to try it myself, and I can't find any software to ease this
pain.  If someone knows of a better way, please let me know!

 - BS