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)
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 a text file whose name ends in ".voblist" and
-containg <vob> elements as described in the dvdauthor manual page, and
-link to that. Note that these list files are currently included
-directly in the control file that WebDVD passes to dvdauthor, which
-means that file names in them will be resolved relative to the current
-directory rather than the directory containing the list file. This is
-probably a bug.
-
-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.
+video sequence, create and link to a VOB-list file (explained below)
+whose name ends in ".voblist".
+
+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. For example:
+
+ <vob-list>
+ <vob file="main.vob" chapters="0:00,4:55,12:13,17:45"/>
+ <vob file="credits.vob"/>
+ </vob-list>
+
+This will result in a title with the following chapters:
+
+ 1: main.vob 0:00- 4:55
+ 2: main.vob 4:55-12:13
+ 3: main.vob 12:13-17:45
+ 4: main.vob 17:45- end
+ 5: credits.vob
Video standards
either nonexistent or empty). WebDVD will automatically follow links
to the other pages and to the video files.
+If you use mjpegtools 1.6.2 or earlier you must add the option
+"--encoder mjpegtools-old". This is due to an incompatible change in
+the syntax of the ppmtoy4m command between versions 1.6.2 and 1.8.
+
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
Each page must fit within the frame - DVD players do not support
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 60 pixels of padding on all sides
-of the body.
+multiple menus. The standard frame size for PAL and SECAM is 720x576
+pixels; for NTSC it is 720x480 pixels. The exact visible area varies
+between TVs so the background should cover all or very nearly all the
+frame whereas the important content such as text must not be placed
+near the edge. For this reason WebDVD applies a stylesheet to all
+pages that adds 60 pixels of padding on all sides of the body; this
+doesn't apply to the background.
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
Floyd-Steinberg dithering, which is certainly good enough for
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.
+There is a limit of 99 "titles" on a DVD. If you need to include more
+than this number of video sequences, you could arrange them as
+chapters of a title, so long as they use the same codecs, resolution,
+aspect ratio and sample rate. However, each chapter will run into the
+next. If this is a real problem, let me know, and I may be able to
+provide a better solution in a later version of WebDVD.
Author and copyright
--------------------
WebDVD was written by Ben Hutchings <ben@decadentplace.org.uk>.
-Copyright 2005 Ben Hutchings.
+Copyright 2005-2006 Ben Hutchings.
This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.
Copyright 1991-1998 Thomas G. Lane. (This applies to the file jquant2.c.)
projects / videolink.git / blobdiff