Looking for free video file to DVD utility

Posted by: BartDG

Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 28/03/2011 17:55

I'm downloaded a few video files for the little one to view. I could now of course always lend him my pc to view them, but I'm guessing the easiest way by far would be to burn those .mp4 files to a video DVD so I can play this DVD on any of the DVD players in the house.

Problem is I can't seem to find a (free) program that'll do this easily for me. I've now tried a few programs that came up after a google search, but none of them seemed to be able to pull this off.

So I figured I'd ask here. Anybody know of a small, handy, free program that'll burn a couple of .mp4 files to a video DVD for me?

Thanks!

Posted by: drakino

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 28/03/2011 18:23

If you have access to a Mac, iDVD (built in with any new mac, part of iLife) will do it. It will take a little bit of time when it transcodes the videos from MPEG 4 to MPEG 2, and tends to not be the best about preserving space on the DVD, but overall it's worked well enough for me.

Posted by: BartDG

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 28/03/2011 18:26

Since a couple of weeks my wife got a new MacBook Pro from her employer. So yes, I do have access to a Mac.

I've only just started to discover its possibilities though. I'll give it a shot! Thanks!

Posted by: BartDG

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 28/03/2011 19:20

Replying to myself here. I've now copied the .mp4 files the mac and was just ready to start play with iDVD. I decided to look at few of the files first, and found out no sound is played. The video plays fine though. I've looked through the quicktime options, but could not find a setting for this. The sound plays fine when I play a clip via youtube, so the sound does work and is at the correct volume. The files also played fine (with sound) on Windows.

Any idea what could cause this? Is this a codec issue? And if so, how do I solve this? (as said, I'm very new to mac)

Edit: I've now installed VLC, and everything plays fine with that, including sound. The problems seems to be with Quicktime.

Posted by: mlord

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 28/03/2011 19:55

Originally Posted By: Archeon

Anybody know of a small, handy, free program that'll burn a couple of .mp4 files to a video DVD for me?

Dunno about "small", but dead simple to use: Devede for Linux/Mac.

Cheers

Posted by: drakino

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 28/03/2011 20:01

On a Mac, Quicktime is the OS level media framework. Anything Apple related will use it (like iDVD), so previewing a file first in Quicktime is a good thing to do. It can be extended with new codecs, just like the Windows Media layer on Windows.

VLC doesn't use Quicktime, instead it has it's own codecs built in.

The easiest codec library I've found on OS X is Perian. Once you install that, Quicktime should be able to handle about anything VLC does, as both projects pull from ffmpeg.

*edit* also somewhat handy, in Quicktime, Command-I will open info on the file, may help narrow down what codec the audio side is using.

Posted by: BartDG

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 28/03/2011 20:22

Thanks for the help!
I've now installed Perian, but it didn't help. Still no sound. cmd-i in Quicktime reveals these are just plain H264 files. No real info on the audio codec though.

I've also installed Mplayer, which came with it's own set of FFMpeg codecs. The files play fine through Mplayer, but still no sound with Quicktime.

BTW, the files cannot be read by iDVD as well, sadly.

Could this be related with the sound issue in Quicktime?

Posted by: BartDG

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 28/03/2011 20:27

Originally Posted By: mlord

Originally Posted By: Archeon

Anybody know of a small, handy, free program that'll burn a couple of .mp4 files to a video DVD for me?

Dunno about "small", but dead simple to use: Devede for Linux/Mac.

Cheers

Thanks Mark! If iDVD falls though, I'll have a look at this. I've already taken a peek at the website, but unfortunately there is no .dwg file especially for Mac, so I guess that means I'll have to compile the code. It's been a while since I've done that, and I can't really remember how.

(I'll look into it though!)

Posted by: drakino

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 28/03/2011 21:21

Try doing Cmd-I when the file is open in VLC and go to the Codec Details tab. Look for the audio stream and see what VLC identifies it as.

Posted by: mlord

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 28/03/2011 21:25

Originally Posted By: Archeon

I've already taken a peek at the website, but unfortunately there is no .dwg file especially for Mac, so I guess that means I'll have to compile the code.

Mmm.. I might be mistaken about an OS/X version -- probably got it confused with something else.

Works very well on Linux though. Slow, but good.

-ml

Posted by: BartDG

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 29/03/2011 05:07

Originally Posted By: drakino

Try doing Cmd-I when the file is open in VLC and go to the Codec Details tab. Look for the audio stream and see what VLC identifies it as.

Ah! In VLC!! I thought you meant in Quicktime.
Let me check...

Ok, this is what VLC says:

Videostream: codec: H264, mpeg 4 AVC, 720x575
Audio: MPEG Audio layer 1/2/3 (mpga), stereo, 48000Hz, bit speed 96 kb/s

Posted by: BartDG

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 29/03/2011 05:09

Originally Posted By: mlord

Originally Posted By: Archeon

I've already taken a peek at the website, but unfortunately there is no .dwg file especially for Mac, so I guess that means I'll have to compile the code.

Mmm.. I might be mistaken about an OS/X version -- probably got it confused with something else.

Works very well on Linux though. Slow, but good.

-ml

No doubt.
I've been looking deeper into this and it seems it's not possible to run this program with OS/X, well, not natively anyway. Some mention is does work with parallels, but that's only normal.

If all else fails, I'll install Linux and try that way.

Posted by: drakino

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 29/03/2011 16:07

Originally Posted By: Archeon

Info from both Quicktime and VLC helps. Since Quicktime didn't identify the audio, it does help prove that it's unable to decode the audio, vs being a problem where Quicktime is muted somehow.

Now I'm puzzled though why Quicktime won't play back the audio. If VLC is to be believe, it's an MPEG1 audio stream, though it's not indicating which exact layer. (MP3 music files for example are MPEG1 Layer 3). I only see mention of MP3 here, so maybe thats the issue. The audio is possibly MPEG 1 layer 1 or 2.

Very odd file, I've usually seen MPEG 4 H.264 video coupled with MPEG 4 audio. I'm not sure how to get it to play in Quicktime, and iDVD. :-(

Posted by: BartDG

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 31/03/2011 09:43

No worries, thanks for trying anyway Tom. I'll look a but further, but if I can't find anything that's able to do it I'll have a look at a cheap streaming device or something and stream the files to my TV.

Posted by: hybrid8

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 31/03/2011 11:24

What did you make the files with? I find it strange that QT won't play it back natively.

You should be able to use Handbrake to transcode the audio while mostly keeping the video the same. Then you can drop it into the DVD program of your choice.

I use Toast to write out video DVDs mostly. iDVD is more for authoring menus and fancy things like that - you don't get to store much video at all on a DVD with it.

Posted by: BartDG

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 31/03/2011 15:25

I didn't make the files myself, so I have no idea what was used. I'll have a look at that Toast software, thanks for the idea. I'd rather avoid transcoding the files because of the quality loss that comes with this method.

Posted by: hybrid8

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 31/03/2011 15:52

I don't think Toast is going to work directly with the files you have. Perian should have supported the audio in those files. It seems to work with everything I've tried it with.

You might be able to simply transcode the audio and then re-mux the new audio track in place of the original. In which case you'd be looking for a MP4 muxer.

Posted by: BartDG

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 31/03/2011 17:51

It's indeed very strange. Not for VLC, because that program has its own codecs built-in and as everybody knows plays just about anything. But Mplayer also plays is correctly, and that player does use external codecs (to my knowledge). I have no idea why Quicktime doesn't seem to be able to do the same. I mean, H264 with mp3 sound isn't all that unusual, is it? I've seen this many time before with .mkv files and Handbrake is also capable of saving files using that format IIRC.

Posted by: hybrid8

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 31/03/2011 17:56

MPlayer uses ffmpeg and other libraries internally, so it doesn't use anything external or part of the OS. I much prefer MPlayer in every respect to VLC.

Mac OS doesn't read the MKV container, but it should have no problems with MP3 audio together with AVC video.

Does iDVD allow you to specify video and audio from two files? If so, then you can save the audio out to a different format, like AAC and then combine it at authoring time.

Posted by: canuckInOR

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 31/03/2011 18:11

Can you post a link one of the problem clips?

Posted by: drakino

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 31/03/2011 18:51

Originally Posted By: hybrid8

Mac OS doesn't read the MKV container, but it should have no problems with MP3 audio together with AVC video.

Does iDVD allow you to specify video and audio from two files? If so, then you can save the audio out to a different format, like AAC and then combine it at authoring time.

I wish VLC would have more solidly identified the audio, instead of saying later 1 2 or 3. Quicktime (even with Perian) seems to only like layer 3. I wonder if the MPEG 2 components for Quicktime widen that support.

iDVD won't let you specify a separate video and audio track, but iMovie will. Workflow would be to import into iMovie the separate audio and video parts, then hit the export to iDVD option.

Posted by: hybrid8

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 31/03/2011 19:25

I'd just transcode the whole thing with Handbrake and the use Taast of iDVD. You'll never notice a quality drop if you set handbrake to high settings.

Posted by: BartDG

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 01/04/2011 05:46

Originally Posted By: hybrid8

Does iDVD allow you to specify video and audio from two files? If so, then you can save the audio out to a different format, like AAC and then combine it at authoring time.

No idea, I haven't tried that. I can only say that iDVD didn't agree with the files. The moment I dragged them onto one of those spaces in order to be able to create a project, iDVD wouldn't accept them.

Posted by: BartDG

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 01/04/2011 05:53

Originally Posted By: canuckInOR

Can you post a link one of the problem clips?

I've just looked, but I cannot seem to find the correct download link anymore. Strange, it was a simple google search.

Maybe I can upload one of those files somewhere and provide the link? The smallest file is only 2.2MB big.

Posted by: mlord

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 01/04/2011 09:48

At 2.2MB, just email it to me here (as an attachment), and I'll make it available.

Posted by: BartDG

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 03/04/2011 17:59

Thanks! Email sent!

Posted by: mlord

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 03/04/2011 18:40

The original file from Archeon is now at http://rtr.ca/99_postamble.mp4
and a straight ffmpeg conversion of it is at http://rtr.ca/99_postamble.avi

The input file plays flawlessly here with xine on Linux.
Here is the ffmpeg conversion log; note the what it says about the input (mp4) file:

Code:

ffmpeg -i 99_postamble.mp4 99_postamble.avi
FFmpeg version SVN-r0.5.1-4:0.5.1-1ubuntu1, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
  configuration: ...
Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 50.00 (50/1) -> 25.00 (25/1)                 
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from '99_postamble.mp4':                                                     
  Duration: 00:00:29.60, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 586 kb/s                                                     
    Stream #0.0(und): Video: h264, yuv420p, 720x576, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 50 tbc                                     
    Stream #0.1(und): Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 96 kb/s                                                
Output #0, avi, to '99_postamble.avi':                                                                          
    Stream #0.0(und): Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 720x576, q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 90k tbn, 25 tbc                         
    Stream #0.1(und): Audio: mp2, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 64 kb/s                                                
Stream mapping:                                                                                                 
  Stream #0.0 -> #0.0                                                                                           
  Stream #0.1 -> #0.1                                                                                           
Press [q] to stop encoding                                                                                      
frame=  739 fps=114 q=31.0 Lsize=    1640kB time=29.56 bitrate= 454.5kbits/s                                    
video:1353kB audio:231kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 3.551336%

The .avi came out with the wrong aspect ratio for some reason,
but I really only ran the conversion to see what ffmpeg
had to say about the input file.

I suggest Archeon try the .avi file for fun.

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 03/04/2011 19:37

Both of those URLs are 404 for me.

Posted by: mlord

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 03/04/2011 19:56

Originally Posted By: wfaulk

Both of those URLs are 404 for me.

Now fixed. Thanks!

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 03/04/2011 21:22

I can verify that Mac OS X Quicktime Player fails to play the audio.

I used VLC to extract the audio and video without transcoding either of them and place them in a MOV container instead. This allowed Quicktime to play the video with audio, but it made the video stutter weirdly.

I also tried transcoding only the audio to AAC and leaving it in an MP4 container. This still caused the video to stutter in Quicktime, and it still wouldn't play the audio. Same with transcoding both.

Finally, I did a non-transcode container move to MPEG-TS, and that's the best outcome I got from Quicktime. It played back the audio properly, and the video didn't stutter, but it did start out slightly corrupted, as if there were a key frame missing.

VLC was able to play all of these files without problem.

One odd thing I noted is that VLC reported the frame rate to be 25.068368 fps and Quicktime reports it as 25.15fps. The fact that they don't match is weird, and the frame rate itself is weird.

My suspicion is that the video is slightly corrupted and that while VLC knows how to deal with it, Quicktime gets mightily confused.

Posted by: hybrid8

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 03/04/2011 21:32

For me, there still seems to be something wrong with the way the first file is linked. The browser identifies it as an HTML file when trying to save.

Posted by: mlord

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 04/04/2011 16:32

Originally Posted By: hybrid8

For me, there still seems to be something wrong with the way the first file is linked. The browser identifies it as an HTML file when trying to save.

Try a different browser? And/or use Live Headers to see the mime type from my server?

Code:

http://rtr.ca/99_postamble.mp4

GET /99_postamble.mp4 HTTP/1.1
Host: rtr.ca
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.16) Gecko/20110319 Firefox/3.6.16
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en,en-us;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/343840/gonew/1/Looking_for_free_video_file_to
DNT: 1

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 18:29:38 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Sun, 03 Apr 2011 20:35:13 GMT
Etag: "1ef10-212049-9479c240"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 2170953
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: video/mp4
Content-Language: en

Looks like the server reports "video/mp4". Does your browser not understand what that means?

Cheers

Posted by: hybrid8

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 04/04/2011 16:46

If I simply click, I can play the video right inside the browser. But unlike other links, including video links, when I right-click to save, it shows an HTML extension.

Which is odd.

Posted by: drakino

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 04/04/2011 17:57

Safari 5.0.4, right click, download linked file, "99_postamble.mp4" is downloading, no .html. Same for download linked file as.

Something is screwy with your Safari browser.

Posted by: hybrid8

Re: Looking for free video file to DVD utility - 04/04/2011 18:10

The option for the first file on my Safari install doesn't even say "Download" - it says "Save Linked file..." The avi file does say 'Download..."

This is a newly installed Safari as of when 5.0.4 came out on Mc OS 10.6.7.

I'll try clearing out as many prefs as I can for it to see if anything changes.