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This tutorial was relesaed on the 15th of March, but quality always trumps age here at LinuxLinks.com. Learn how to create your own DVD's using a couple open source projects that make only mouse skills required to get the job done.
Today, I want to make you a star ... of your own movies that is. Actually, I'm going to suppose that you've already made the movies and now you want to transfer them to DVD for your family and friends to enjoy. Here's an example.
Back in July of 2004, my son, Sebastian, was born. Aside from the obvious major changes this implied and the numerous purchases we never imagined before that day, there was one additional piece of technology that was absolutely essential. Yes, I'm talking about a digital video camera. Months pass and Sebastian's days and weeks get recorded to digital tape. As Christmas rolls around, it becomes evident that we'll need one more piece of hardware, a CD burner. We already had a star. Now we had to share his exploits with others.
I'm a Linux guy. I love working with the operating system. I also love trying things out, checking out some of the thousands of excellent applications. Generally speaking, I often find that in terms of the availability of applications, running Linux is an embarrassment of riches. There's just so much excellent and mature software out there, much of it free. Unfortunately, when it came to finding a way to make DVDs of those home movies, I didn't feel quite so rich. Undaunted, I decided to find the tools that I knew had to be out there.
As it turns out, there are a small handful of tools that do the job, although most are still at the beta stage and in some cases, alpha. At the heart of all these applications is a program by Scott Smith called dvdauthor. This program puts together the menus, buttons, chapter breaks, video clips, and all those other elements that go into making a DVD. An XML script gets generated with all the necessary commands and subcommands to get the job done. It's the classic hammer and chisel way of doing things, and while those are definitely my roots, I was determined to find some power tools.
One of the programs I discovered is Alex Thuering's DVDStyler, a graphical front end to the dvdauthor program. It lets you drag and drop movie files into a project area, create buttons, add backgrounds, set chapter breaks, and more. You can even burn the finished product right from the graphical interface. I am, however, getting ahead of myself. Full tutorial from BookPool
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