Coomand line DVD burning?

[Lester Jacobs]

Hi,

Anyone know of a commandline oriented DVD burning program? What the program should accept is a list of MPEG files as commandline options and then it should burn a basic DVD (playable on a consumer DVD unit) with each of the MPEG files as chapters.

This functionality would offer a quick and dirty way to archive Sage TV recordings to DVD via a batch job (or possibly Sage Studio when that is released).

I'm using Ulead DVD MovieFactory SE (came bundled with the Hauppauge 250) to archive shows right now but it is GUI based. I'd liek the same in a commandline utility.

Cheers
Lester

[PGPfan]

The only command-line dvd burning app I've seen is provided by Copy-to-Dvd (VSO Software). I use it, and like it quite alot.

Once Sage Studio is out, it should be pretty easy to integrate the 'save to DVD' button into Sage.

-PGPfan

[mikbro]

I took a look at CopyToDvd, but I did not see where it would create a dvd playable in consumer dvd players... It would just burn the requested file to the dvd (like any other cd/dvd burning programs).

Am I missing something obvious? I can see where a commandline tool that authored a dvd from a set of mpeg files would be extremely usefull, but I don't see it in this program...

[gplasky]

Are you using the switch /dvdvideo="path to folder" ? The issue might be the program needs to see the source just like a ripped DVD with the video_ts folder and *.vob files.


Gerry

[mikbro]

When I use the interface (not the command line) and select the "Video DVD" project type, it prompts me for the video_ts.ifo file. Of course if I ripped an existing dvd I would have that, or if I used a DVD authoring program I would have it. What I thought this program might do for me is give me the ability to specify a few mpeg files (encoded correctly of course) and voila, have it burn a fully authored dvd.

Am I still missing something :-)

[SHS]

Lester don't you mean command line DVD Authoring Software but the program will need some kind build in shrink tool to automatic resize for it fit DVD-5 disc.
I think I know what after Lester but far I know of only Linux has it
So what your want do is have it automatic take MPG file and convert them DVD ready for burning or even have it burn it all in one shot.

[glbrown]

Originally posted by mikbro
What I thought this program might do for me is give me the ability to specify a few mpeg files (encoded correctly of course) and voila, have it burn a fully authored dvd.

Am I still missing something :-)

You need to specify what 'fully authored' is.

I have been spending a lot of time lately trying to find the best way to archive content. I have been using Copy2Dvd for both DVDs and SageDVDs. I have never used the command line functionality but might try real soon.

Rips from DVDs or authored content from a program like WinDVD creator or ulead or whatever require that you use the Create Video DVD option. These copies are written in the standard format playable on a stb dvd player.

Sage creates mpeg 2 files that can be copied directly to a dvd using the Create Data DVD option. You can map your dvd drive as a library directory in Sage and play these dvds directly from Sage. You can't play these in a stb but who cares; they play in Sage just like any other content, the simple copy of a 4g file takes about 20 minutes, and you can always author to a video dvd later.

Any sage file can be copied directly to a dvd provided it fits. Here is where the big problem lies. Mpeg files were never meant to be edited so there are only 2 choices to archive, re-encode or split. Reencoding takes too long, requires user intervention and judgement calls, and more often than not results in quality problems.

I am resorting to splitting the files with the unix binary split program just to get them off the hard drive and it's working pretty well. You have to copy them back to the hard drive and cat them together to watch them but the at least you have the content at it's original quality. It won't be long until we can burn dual layer DVDs and then this won't be an issue.

I tried a half a dozen file splitting utilities and the only one that works reliably is the split included in the MKS Utilities. They all fail to work with multi-gigabyte sized files at some point or other. The max split size with MKS split is about 1.5G. 3 of these fill a DVD. It takes me about 20 minutes to split 5G and that's while I am burning another dvd, watching a recorded show on Sage while Sage is recording 2 other programs.

Dontcha just love it...

[mikbro]

What I was hoping for was a simple program that would take mpeg files and author/burn them onto a dvd that is playable in stbs. Ideally a program that would be batch/commandline controllable so it could be called from SageTV. I know there are programs that will simply burn the file to the DVD, but I thought from what I read at the top that CopyToDVD might do more than this.

Oh well... anyone want to write one :-)

[Lester Jacobs]

Originally posted by SHS
Lester don't you mean command line DVD Authoring Software but the program will need some kind build in shrink tool to automatic resize for it fit DVD-5 disc.

SHS,

That's exactly what I'm talking about. I basically want the program to do exactly what Ulead Moviefactory does for me right now but from the commandline

For instance, right now in Sage I record shows at 2gb per hour. This means I can fit two shows on a DVD-5. All I simply do at the moment is start up Ulead DVD Moviefactory, add two files to the project, choose a very simple menu that simply has the names of the mpeg files as chapters then burn the DVD. All of this could be done without any user intervention at all.

Would I would like to do is just something like the following

ulead.exe file1 file2

This would create a DVD with each file as a chapter and the DVD would be readable is a regular consumer DVD player.

Regards
Lester

[gplasky]

OK. I looked around and this seems to be what you're looking for. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work with any of my mpeg2 files. Seems to not like the headers. But it does build the DVD structure for you. But because of the header problem it didn't build the .ifo file and the .vob was unplayable. Maybe someone else can take a crack at it.

DVDAuthor

Gerry

[justme]

I never played with that tool, but I believe it takes code from an Mpegtool I've used before. That tool always had problems with my PVR mpeg's headers. It would still do the splits but it would complain about the header, so I guess this is an enheritance from the code it used. I was able to "fix" the header with several tools but they were all graphically based, defeating the purpose of a CLI Mpeg tool. The only way I was able to fix the header(by CLI) was to do a remux with another CLI tool, but this was overkill to just fix a header.IMO So I just gave up on CLI solutions at the time. Looks like it's time to go back again.

What we want to do shouldn't be impossible since many free programs do the same thing by just putting a UI wrapper over a set of CLI tools. I think it will take the Studio though, before we can generate the neccessary I/O for such a thing in Sage.

[justme]

OK it looks like it does inherit the issue from the mpegtool I've used. It fails when I try it on files created directly form Sage or WinTVcap. So I decided to test my theory...
I did a demux(using TMPGEnc plus) and then used DVDauthor's built in tool(mplex) to remux the audio and video files. Sure enough when I ran DVDauthor on this file it created the DVD structure no problem. I did not burn this off to DVD but it ran fine from WinDVD.

So I'd say this program definitely has potential if we can find a easy way to "fix" the headers before using it. My issue with doing a demux and then remuxing is not so much a time issue, as this would not be that bad when done behind the scenes. But I worry about A/V synce issues that could be introduced by this. I had problems with this before when I tried to use the Mpegtool that appears to be part of this programs code. It may be fixed now though, so that may be a nonissue.

OK so if we can "fix" the header(however) then this program seems to generate the neccessary files and structure for DVDs. We can then use one of the many tools to make an ISO and then burn it using the many tools for this. I think ImgTool might be a good tool to use to build the ISO and then burn the Disc. I looked at the site for it and it seems to be able to use the Nero API to burn the ISO after creating it. ImgTool also has a CLI version, which is a plus for me. This could cut down of the number of steps/programs but I have yet to try ImgTools myself. Has anyone here tried it?

Anyone else have an idea on other ways to "fix" the header? If nothing else does anyone know of a good tool that can Demux the file and is CLI based(I used TMPGEnc for my test). I'll try to find the Mpegtool that I used before, whose code I suspect this program is using. I know it did splits, joins and muxes but I can't remember if it did demuxs. Also I hope it has progressed since I last tried it as it had bad AV sync issues then.

Also anybody want to brave this process the whole way? ie burn a DVD, preferably using a long show(~2hrs) since AV sync issues may not show up on a shorter file.

PS:The Mpeg I used was already recorded in DVD long play format. I didn't want to complicate the issue farther, by using a nonDVD standard recording quality.

PPS:Really cool find by gplasky.

[gplasky]

I'll venture a go at this. I have TMPGEnc and also TMPGEnc DVD Author. I'll do one of my recordings and take it all the way to a burn tonight with Copy2DVD using the commandline.
It's too bad they couldn't do a commandline version of TMPGEnc DVD Author. I would probably just do a show (movie) per DVD and wouldn't have a need for a menu. But what would be cool would be define a standard menu and then define filex /chapter1 filey/chapter2 filez/chapter3 and have it build the menu accordingly. (DVDAuthor also has this capability and can be defined in an xml file it can read.)

Gerry

[justme]

I'll venture a go at this.

Cool, I can't wait to hear what happens.

DVDAuthor also has this capability and can be defined in an xml file it can read.

I love DVDauthor's support of XML files for the structure. I think this will be one of it's best features in the long run. If we can get this working then there shouldn't be any problem getting the Studio to provide the neccessary data to configure the XML file(fingers crossed). From what Jeff has hinted at and said so far, I doubt we'll have any issue getting the Studio to feed data to and from an app. This is such a basic behavior for so many different situations. If he doesn't have such a capabilities in the Studio then we just bug him until he does.

It's too bad they couldn't do a commandline version of TMPGEnc DVD Author.

To bad everyone seems to have forgotten the good old command line interface. It is really very underappreciated by many til they try to do something like this.

[justme]

OK I found an old commandline based mpegtool(started off as a linux app). However it's available as a compiled windows binary here. Click download and look for the third link(mpgtx.zip). By the way the online doc is a little off(specifically for demux) for the windows binary version. Basically you just need to call the app with the "-d" switch(demux) then the desired file to demux and optionally specify a base name for the output files with "-b".
ie "mpgtx -d dilbert.mpg -b test"
Will generate a test.m2v and a test.mp2 file from your source dilbert.mpg. If you need help just run mpgtx with "-h" (without the quotes) for it's windows accurate help. This help screen claims to also do splits but I've always had bad luck with using it on PVR created files.

Anyway I did a test on a sage recorded mpg. I demuxed it using TMPGEnc just like before and then remuxed it with the "mplex" tool that comes with DVDauthor. I then demuxed the same file with "mpgtx" and remuxed with "mplex". Both versions of the files worked fine with DVDauthor. Also all 3 files(.mp2,.m2v, and the remuxed .mpg) appear identical reguardless of which program(mpgtx or TMPGEnc) was used to demux the original file. So we now have a set of tools that will be fully controllable from the command line and "fix" the header issue that DVDauthor has with the raw PVR mpg. One thing to note is that you must use the "-f 8" option(see the DVDauthor docs) when you use "mplex" to remux to ensure a DVD type mpeg. This applies whether you used mpgtx or TMPGEnc to demux.
ie "mplex -f 8 -o fixed.mpg test.m2v test.mp2"
Will remux the video(test.m2v) and audio(test.mp2) files into a DVDauthor compatible mpg(fixed.mpg).

Now that I've gotten rid of the need to use TMPGenc I'll try out ImgTool's CLI mode and see if I can carry the process the rest of the way thru using just CLI apps. I chose Imgtool over CopyToDVD since Imgtool is donationware and therefore more easily accessable to people, but CopyToDVD does have a trial. Also you should donate if you use Imgtool on a reguliar basis. This last step shouldn't be a problem but I've never used ImgTool before, so who knows. Still this last step could be done by other apps like CopyToDVD, if needed/wanted. The only thing that worries me is the final integrity of the DVD. I just have this nasty feeling that the errors in the original PVR mpg may come back to bite us. Still there's only one way to find out.

[Lester Jacobs]

Excellent work.

I'll try this out. Won't be able to get to it for a few days though since I'm a bit tied up at the moment. However I'll definitely give this a whirl and see what happens.

Lester

[gplasky]

OK. Here's what I did.

I had a 10 minute clip from awhile ago. Not sure what quality it was recorded in but judging by the quality it was probably standard. So I ran it thru mgptx. Then ran it thru mplex. Then I ran it thru DVDAuthor. Played it in both WinDVD and Zoomplayer-no problems.

Took an episode of Friends. Same scenario. Better quality though again not sure. I think this was Great quality. Ran thru everything. Used Roxio Media Creator 7 (brand new version) and burned it to a DVD. Took it to a set top DVD player and it played great. Picture quality was good but I could pick up a little pixalation every now and again.

Now the other night I recorded The Maltese Falcon. This quality I knew to be the MyDVD setting from the customization text file on the support site. This is what is referred to as the HQ DVD settings. videobitrate=4500000, width=720, height=480, audiobitrate=224, vbr=1, peakvideobitrate=6000000.

MPGTX doesn't like these settings. Immediately errored out as not a valid mpeg file. Couldn't go any further with this.

So tonight I set up a couple of recordings-DVD long play for one and DVD standard play for another. I will see how these fare. I will also do a Copy2DVD commandline burn with these to see how that goes.

Onward and Upward.

Gerry

[justme]

All in all, sounds very promising. I'm actually suprised it worked for any but the Sage DVD Xlong/long/standard play formats in the standalone player. My tests using Imgtool and Daemon tools as a virtual DVD drive were just as good. I did a test of 4 dilberts burnt at DVD long play burnt to one DVD ISO and mounted it as a Virtual DVD. I also burnt a Stargate SG1 recorded at DVD standard to a DVD ISO and it played with no problems on the virtual DVD drive. I used WinDVD as the player for all my tests. I'd say this is very promising since all my tests were done with all CLI utilities. And your actual burnt DVDs played fine in your standalone player. So unless Roxio Media Creator 7 did something to help make the DVDauthor created file structures more standalone DVD compliant...I said our combined tests prove that we've got a potentially working CLI solution. All be it with a limited sample, still this morning I wouldn't have thought it very likely.

Simplified version of my test: Sage Recoreded mpg>mpgtx>mplex>DVDauthor>ImgTools>finished DVD ISO mounted as a virtual DVD drive and played with WinDVD. This same ISO could have been burnt to a DVD using ImgTools interface to the Nero API. This burning by ImgTools would still have been CLI based as well.

I'm happy, what about you.

[gplasky]

Running into issues.

I don't know if it is me or what. mpgtx does not like the moives I've recorded in DVD-Standard and DVD-Long. I guess I'll just schedule recordings in various formats and see what I find. Very strange.

I'm going to use TMPGEnc just to make sure there is no problems with these files.

Gerry

[justme]

Ah, there's always issues. Someone very wise just reminded me of that last night. I was already worried about mpgtx, since it's code is over 2 years old. Not to mention it's a quick port from the linux version. I have searched the net for all kinds of mpeg tools that demux, and have a few for you to try if mpgtx is the problem. Still if you can get it to work with TMPGEnc(I didn't know it coul be controlled by CLI) or if someone can tell a us a better way to "fix" the header.

A better way to fix the header would be nice since to demux a 4.5 GB file seems to take about 2-3 minutes(I didn't time it) and uses fairly high resources. We can mitigate the CPU usage fairly easily, but the HD useage is another issue. If we don't delete any material until we finish the entire DVDauthor process we are looking at using 3 to 4 times HD space used by the original source files. Sure we can delete the demux and remux versions after DVDauthor finishes but it would be nice to just skip this(de/re-mux) step. Anybody here an expert on Mpeg streams and specifically mpeg headers?

Just a post to clarify, since I think I never stated this clearly. All my tests with what I called "TMPGEnc" were done with the commercial TMPGEnc Plus inside of it's graphical UI. Sorry if I confused anyone. Anyway just to be clear my personal goal is to have this entire process be CLI based.