Convert various phone video to DVD in linux

Problem: Various .MOV and .AVI files in various small resolutions collected over the years. How do you to convert to dvd?

Solution:

Ubuntu 9.04

Used WinFF aka "Video Converter" front end to mpeg

In WinFF, I dragged and dropped all the avi and mov files to WinDD.

In WinFF,Then I selected the “Output Details” and picked “Convert to: DVD”. “Device Preset” PAL DVD HQ (16:9)

WinFF used this command
/usr/bin/ffmpeg -threads 2 -i "/media/2004-07-23/VideosFromCamera/2003-08-02_0845_100_0088.avi" -target pal-dvd -aspect 16:9 -b 8000k -mbd rd -trellis -mv0 -cmp 0 -subcmp 2 "/media/2004-07-23/VideosFromCameraConverted/2003-08-02_0845_100_0088.mpg"

(WinFF "Edit-Preferences-Multithreading for dual core" gives the "-threads 2" option)

Next step, create the DVD structure (see the end for an example dvd.xml file which you need to edit to list which movies to include on the DVD):

dvdauthor -o dvd -x dvd.xml

Check it worked with

mplayer dvd:// -dvd-device ./dvd

Burn the DVD with

growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvdrw -dvd-video ./dvd/
Example dvd.xml file used by dvdauthor above:

<dvdauthor>
  <vmgm />
  <titleset>
    <titles>
      <video format="pal" aspect="4:3"/>
      <audio format="ac3" lang="en"/>
      <pgc>
        <vob file="00026.mpg"/>
        <vob file="00027.mpg"/>
        <vob file="00028.mpg"/>
      </pgc>
    </titles>
  </titleset>
</dvdauthor>

Note that I used an aspect ratio of 4:3 in the dvd.xml file above which suited the source video from the phones, but 16:9 can be used too. (But when using WinFF I had no success selecting the “Device Preset” PAL DVD HQ (4:3) option, only the (16:9) option worked ok. With the (4:3) preset, WinFF would work fine, but dvdauthor would generate lots of warnings and the final dvd would not play well)