How to correctly write a video DVD from MPEG-2 files

[Nico Sabbi]

Il Friday 28 December 2007 06:47:27 Kevin J. Cummings ha scritto:
> Richard Shaw wrote:
> > Are you sure that the files are fully MPEG2 compliant? If you
> > play with something like mplayer from the command line does the
> > video and audio codec's it says it's using seem correct?
>
> On my laptop, mplayer has a problem with the AC3 audio (not
> compiled in), so I can see the video, but not listen to the audio. 
> I think the installed version came from livna.  (that's the version
> that came shipped with the laptop.)  Totem seems to have no
> problems playing both audio and video though.

uhm, unlikely

>
> On my desktop/server machine, it plays the audio and the video just
> fine.   (for some reason, I'm running the ATRPMs version on my home
> server.  Maybe because its also the MythTV server.)
>
> Can't install the ATRPMs version on the FC6 laptop.  That'll have
> to wait until I upgrade the FC6.i386 to F8.x86_64.  Probably some
> time after the new year.
>
> Whether the files are strict MPEG-2, I can't tell you.  The file
> command
>
> seems to think they are some flavor of MPEG-2:
> > MPEG sequence, v2, program multiplex
> >
> > Richard

something quick and easy (only remuxing, no re-encoding required):  
run $ mkfifo /tmp/fifo , then: 

$ mencoder -of mpeg -mpegopts \ 
format=dvd:tsaf:interleaving2 -o /tmp/fifo  -oac copy -ovc copy \ 
file1.mpg file2.mpg

and on the other:

$ dvdauthor -o dvd_dir -t /tmp/fifo && dvdauthor -o dvd_dir -T

If all is fine in few minutes you will have a burnable dvd_dir 
directory:

$ growisofs -dvd-compat -Z dvd_dir -dvd-video -udf -R -J

Notice that if the bitrates (of the video or of the audio stream)
are too high the first pass will likely lead to errors and you will
have to reencode at least the video stream (read the docs
in www.mplayerhq.hu for details)