[juneau-lug] Re: Homebrew DVD success!

james.zuelow@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> So Kevin and I were talking earlier today and thought that this might
> be a fun topic for a meeting.
> 
> I can bring a DV camera and demo going from tape to DVD.
> 
> Since capture is pretty much the same, once we've got the DV captured
> we can go through some different front ends for creating the DVDs and
> explain some of the pitfalls you can run into.
> 
> Idea?

Doing my Scot ancestry proud, I have resisted the temptation to buy a DV 
camera.  My camcorder is an analog Hi-8 critter.  In their infinite 
wisdom, the makers of Kino and Main Actor only capture from a digital 
source now.  Ugh.  I have a Hauppauge WinTV PVR card and it captures 
from the camcorder and creates an MPEG 2.  The processor is on the card 
which is nice - it's able to keep up so you don't get dropped frames 
like you might using the CPU.  Since the editor software doesn't accept 
a stream from it however, I have to capture it raw at the CLI.

Various capture settings such as PAL/NTSC, channel, source and such are 
  controlled with a perl program called ptune-ui.

Main Actor will open the file in .mpg format, but Kino pukes on it so I 
have to convert it to .dv format with ffmpeg which Kino likes.  Triples 
the size of it though.

I've not found Main Actor to be particularly stable, and it watermarks 
your output unless you pony up some $.  If it could capture directly 
(earlier versions did) and was more stable I wouldn't mind paying but 
Kino is a much better option at this point I think.  It will be 
instructive to see what others are using.

Not sure that I want to lug my computer/monitor around, but I might find 
time to do a slide show in OO.o Impress on the hoops I have to jump 
through.  IIFC, Tom said the libs have a projector but we didn't use it 
last time - what's the scoop Tom, can the lib provide us with overhead 
capability?  Do we have to reserve it?

I also don't have a DVD burner.  I got a CD burner last year, figuring 
that I didn't want a DVD burner yet since we're on the cusp of the 
HD-DVD and Blue-Ray.  (Looks like another Betamax/VHS war to me.)  I did 
favor Blue-Ray but it's supported by Sony and they do root-kits.  HD-DVD 
has Microsoft's backing and Windows *is* a root-kit <g> but at least you 
know that up front.  Blue-Ray packs in more bits though.  What a 
quandary.  Long story short, I'm not in a hurry to buy a DVD burner any 
time soon, until the dust settles.

All that to say, what would be worthwhile for me at least might also be 
some discussion on SVCD which should play in modern DVD players.  I 
haven't gotten to the point of trying to create one yet.  Much more 
limited in output file size, and it's going to run in a smaller frame, 
but I can live w/that.  At least I'd have something to send to the 
grandparents.

May be that we have fodder for several meetings here - there's a lot of 
different aspects to the process...

...Kevin
-- 
Kevin Miller
http://www.alaska.net/~atftb
Juneau, Alaska
Registered Linux User No: 307357
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