Authoring DVDs from MKV files

[evoweiss]

Hi,

I've been pulling my hair out in trying to convert and mkv file with subtitles to a DVD that can be played on a home player. To make matters more arcane, the mkv is often in NTSC and I would like to convert them to PAL. I have tried avidemux over the past two days and the results are uniformly poor with lagging audio, crashes, and other problems. I am happy to work on the command line, but have been unable to find reasonable guides. Is there anybody here who can point me to something reasonably clear? I know the thread on the forums and used it in the past, but it is outdated as transcode crashes these days.

Best

Alex

[DawgG]

i think there is no easy wa to do this (only the other way round :wink: ) and i've never done it, but i think at least these steps are involved (and it can't be done with avidemux alone, but there shozuld be linux-progs for every step involved):

-extract the streams you want from the mkv-file with mkvextract (media-video/mkvtoolnix)
-transcode the resulting files so they conform to dvd-video-specs (with ffmpeg, mencoder, avidemux, ...) the subs might be problematic but spumux (media-video/dvdauthor) seems to able to handle it.
-then you can author your dvd with dvdauthor or some gui-program.
if you try it let me know if you succeed.
GOOD LUCK!
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DUMM KLICKT GUT.

[aCOSwt]

[jasn]

I've never personally done this, but I think that DeVeDe, Tovid, and HandBrake are some tools that should be able to accomplish this for you.

Good Luck..

[DawgG]

converting the videofiles themselves is no problem (my tool of choice for this would be ffmpeg because it has a preset for this format, i think).
the way i understand it, th OP wants to create a "standards-compliant "Video-DVD" with subtitles which has quite strict requirements: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video-DVD to watch it (as a DVD-Video) on a dvd-player connected to a tv.

while they are quite nice, those python-progs like devede and tovid cannot do subs at all (and devede has been crashing on my box for a long time). so i think the only way to go is prepare all the files according to the dvd-video-standard and then use spumux/dvdauthor to create the DVD-files.
(i think soon i'll try this myself with a recently produced mkv.)
_________________
DUMM KLICKT GUT.

[beandog]

[Fitzcarraldo]

Using Bombono DVD in Linux to create a DVD-Video disc from a MKV file
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