[clue-tech] DVDs, Christmas, and morons

[Patrick H.]

Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 3:09:14 PM
From: David L. Willson <DLWillson at TheGeek.NU>
To: clue-tech <clue-tech at cluedenver.org>
Subject: [clue-tech] DVDs, Christmas, and morons
> Some time ago, I found that if I put a bunch of JPGs on a DVD, that just about any Video DVD player would be able to show them in a slideshow.  Are there video and audio codecs that work the same way?  OK, nevermind about the audio codec, I know: MP3 and WMA.  It galls me to have to use proprietary codecs, but I'll get over it.  What about video, though?  I made a 4GB USB stick with mixed media for my family and friends this year for Christmas, and I'd like to do something like it next year, but I want to make it tech-noob friendly, by making it possible to "just throw it in the DVD player" and enjoy most of the content, if not all of it, without ruining the cross-platform enjoyability of the computer-based experience.
>
> Maybe I should be asking if there's a way to produce a Video DVD that works well in most DVD players and most computers, without using proprietary software or codecs?
>
> If not, how close can I get?  This year, the disk contains a bunch of programs for Windows, that also exist for Linux, HTML or RTF (text) files, OGV's (Ogg Theora), OGA's (Ogg Vorbis), and JPG's.  I included the Windows DirectX codec installer for the media, so everything can be consumed by a Windows or Linux user, but not a complete moron with no understanding of either one.
>
> My goal next year, is to make most of the content accessible, even to the family moron.  :-)
>
> David L. Willson
> Network Engineer
> MCT, MCSE, Linux+
> tel://720.333.LANS
>
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>   
The only codecs you can use for DVD's are MPEG-2 for video and MP2 or 
AC3 for audio. Certain players support other formats such as divx, but 
the only guaranteed format that will work is mpeg-2.
Its not too difficult to create a video dvd out of video files, unless 
you want to create menus, and then it becomes a royal pain.

Anyway, transcode is probably the most powerful video software available 
for linux, and they even have a guide for converting video to the format 
a DVD player will recognize, and also how to author it to a DVD.
http://www.transcoding.org/cgi-bin/transcode?Tutorials/Authoring_PC_Media_To_DVD

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