- dvdauthor
- expat 1.x
-- Gtkmm 2.0
-- ffmpeg or mjpegtools
-- Mozilla 1.7.8 or later, or XULRunner
-- netpbm
+- Gtkmm 2.4 or later
+- either of:
+ - ffmpeg including mpeg2video encoding
+ ("ffmpeg -formats" should show "DEVSDT mpeg2video" in the codecs section)
+ - both of:
+ - mjpegtools 1.8 or later
+ - netpbm
+- Mozilla 1.8 or later, or XULRunner 1.9 or later
- Xvfb (from XFree86 or X.org)
To build a complete DVD image you will also need:
-- mkisofs
+- either of:
+ - genisoimage (from cdrkit)
+ - mkisofs (from cdrtools)
You will also need a program for producing DVD-suitable MPEG-1 or
MPEG-2 video files.
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".
+".mpeg", ".mpeg2", ".mpg" or ".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".
VOB-lists
4: main.vob 17:45- end
5: credits.vob
+You can link to the start of a chapter by adding "#" and the chapter
+number after the VOB-list's file name. For example:
+
+ <a href="movie.voblist#1">Chapter 1</a><br>
+ <a href="movie.voblist#2">Chapter 2</a><br>
+ <a href="movie.voblist#3">Chapter 3</a><br>
+ <a href="movie.voblist#4">Chapter 4</a>
+
Video standards
The encoding of analogue TV and video signals varies in many different
The default is to use "PAL" parameters.
-Currently
-
Preview
To get a rough preview of the menus, run "videolink --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.
+Press T to go to the "top" (main) menu or Q to quit.
+
Processing
To create a DVD filesystem, run "videolink menu-url output-dir" where
By default, VideoLink now calls ffmpeg to generate MPEG-2 streams for
menus. If you want it to use mjpegtools as it previously did, you
-must add the option "--encoder mjpegtools". If you use mjpegtools
-1.6.2 or earlier you must instead use "--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.
+must add the option "--encoder mjpegtools".
If this is successful you can then use mkisofs to create a DVD image
from the output directory. Alternately you can write this directory
above. 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 VideoLink 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 version 1.8, Mozilla may signal that a page is completely
-loaded before any background images are loaded and displayed. This
-can result in VideoLink converting the page without the background
-images. If VideoLink is built with an older version of Mozilla you
-can work around this by using absolutely-positioned "inline" images,
-since Mozilla will always wait for these to load.
+reason VideoLink applies a stylesheet to all pages that adds padding
+equal to 10% of the frame dimension on each side of the body; this
+doesn't apply to the background.
DVD players do not have "back" buttons, so you should generally
provide links to "higher" menu pages. However, they do have a button
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 VideoLink.
+Currently VideoLink code can generate up to 999 menus but it may be
+possible for me to raise this internal limit if you want more. There
+appears to be an absolute limit of 12800 menus on a DVD.
+
+Bugs
+----
+
+VideoLink should set the assumed screen resolution to 40 dpi, which I
+reckon to be the average resolution of a standard definition TV
+display. This would mean that text with a font size expressed in
+millimetres or points will appear around the specified size.
+Earlier versions of VideoLink did this when built to use Mozilla 1.7.
+Unfortunately the resolution setting in Mozilla 1.8 actually affects
+measurements in pixels and not measurements in millimetres or points!
+The assumed screen resolution is always 96 dpi.
+
+Please specify measurements such as font sizes in pixels because
+measurements in millimetres or points are liable to change if and when
+I can override the assumed screen resolution again.
+
Author and copyright
--------------------
VideoLink was written by Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>.
-Copyright 2005-2006 Ben Hutchings.
+Copyright 2005-2008 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