WebDVD depends on the following software:
- dvdauthor
+- expat 1.x
- Gtkmm 2.0
- mjpegtools
- Mozilla 1.7.x (later versions may work but are untested)
Usage
-----
-Run "webdvd URL DIR" where URL is the URL for the page that is to be
-the top menu of the DVD and DIR is the directory in which to create
-the DVD filesystem (which should be missing or empty). It will
-automatically follow links to other pages and to video files,
-rendering each page. You must be careful not to link to pages that
-you do not want to appear on the disc, such as normal web sites.
+Design your DVD menus as a series of HTML pages linking to each other
+and to MPEG-1/2 videos that are suitable for use on a DVD. You must
+be careful not to link to pages that you do not want to appear on the
+disc, such as normal web sites. Also note the limitations listed
+below.
+
+Linking to video
+
+You can link directly to local MPEG video files whose names end in
+".vob". If you wish to combine multiple files into a single video
+sequence ("title" in DVD terminology) or to add chapter marks to a
+video sequence, create and link to a VOB-list file (explained below)
+whose name ends in ".voblist".
+
+You can link to a title and begin playback at the beginning of a
+specific chapter by adding "#" and then the chapter number to the end
+of the URL.
+
+VOB-lists
+
+A VOB-list file is an XML file with the document element <vob-list>
+and containing <vob> elements as described in the dvdauthor manual
+page. The file names in a VOB-list file are resolved relative to the
+directory containing the list file.
+
+Video standards
By default, webdvd generates PAL/SECAM video. If you wish to produce
-NTSC DVDs you can override this by adding the option "--video-std ntsc".
+NTSC DVDs you can override this by adding the option "--video-std ntsc"
+to the following commands.
+
+Preview
-If webdvd runs successfully you can use mkisofs to create a DVD image:
+To get a rough preview of the menus, run "webdvd --preview menu-url"
+where menu-url is the URL or filename of the first page to show.
+Currently videos cannot be displayed in this preview mode.
- mkisofs -dvd-video DIR > IMAGE
- rm -rf DIR
+Processing
-Alternately you can write the filesystem directly to a writable DVD
-with growisofs or mkisofs plus a suitable version of cdrecord.
+To create a DVD filesystem, run "webdvd menu-url output-dir" where
+menu-url is the URL or filename of the top menu page and output-dir is
+the directory in which to create the filesystem (which should be
+either nonexistent or empty). WebDVD will automatically follow links
+to the other pages and to the video files.
+
+If this is successful you can then use mkisofs to create a DVD image
+from the output directory. Alternately you can write this directory
+directly to a writable DVD with growisofs or with mkisofs piped to a
+suitable version of cdrecord.
+
+Example
+-------
+
+A live example set of menus can currently be found at
+<http://womble.decadentplace.org.uk/software/debconf5-dvd/menus/main.html>.
+Note that this has large background images that will take some time to
+load.
Limitations
-----------
scrolling menus and WebDVD currently is not able to split them into
multiple menus. Note also that the video frame is somewhat larger
than the visible area of a normal TV. For this reason WebDVD applies
-a stylesheet to all pages that adds 50-60 pixels of padding on all
-sides of the body.
+a stylesheet to all pages that adds 60 pixels of padding on all sides
+of the body.
+
+Prior to Mozilla version 1.8, which I have not yet tested, Mozilla may
+signal that a page is completely loaded before any background images
+are loaded and displayed. This results in snapshots that do not
+include background images. You can work around this by using
+absolutely-positioned "inline" images, or attempt to build WebDVD
+against Mozilla 1.8.
+
+DVD players do not have "back" buttons, so you should generally
+provide links to "higher" menu pages. However, they do have a button
+for returning to the top menu.
WebDVD sends a "mouseover" event for each link and sets it into its
"hover" state, then records how this changes its appearance. This
highlighting of buttons to using no more than 4 colours. WebDVD will
reduce link highlighting to 1 transparent and 3 opaque colours using
Floyd-Steinberg dithering, which is certainly good enough for
-anti-alised text but may not be so good for complex highlighting.
+anti-aliased text but may not be so good for complex highlighting.
+
+There is a limit of 99 "titlesets" (groups of video sequences) on a
+DVD. Currently WebDVD does not attempt to group video sequences
+together, so there is a limit of 99 video sequences altogether.
Author and copyright
--------------------
projects / videolink.git / blobdiff