Will I FINALLY prove my brother wrong?

[blackbelt_jones]

My brother, who has been telling me for four years that Linux is a waste of time, writes:

50 DVDs for $15 works out to about 33 cents a piece. I wouldn't pay more than that. Are you telling me you think you can burn DVDs on your $20 computer? That would certainly be a selling point for linux.

Well, I had been telling him no such thing, just asking his opinion on the price of some DVDs that I had seen on sale at staples... but now, of course, I have to accept the challenge. I purchased this computer a week ago at a yard sale for 20 dollars, and added the DVD burner and the harddrive. It's a P266 with 192 mb RAM. I've burned a cd with this system using K3B, so I'm hoping that I can burn a DVD from the console using the method outlined in this tutorial:

http://justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=142299

I've just finished installing all the required applications with YAST. I'm using SUSE10.0. If it doesn'twork, I may try it again with slackware, although I would expect that Installing the software will probably involve a lot more work. It's past midnight, and I don't want the experiment to take all night, so I'm going to try burning a short DVD, a single episodeof "Arrested Development".

If I suceed, I will be very very happy.

Here goes nothing...

[paj12]

I hope, for your sake, that your burner has buffer underrun protection. Otherwise, your results might be less than optimal.

EDIT: Did you also do the transcoding on your $20 PC? If so, you've got the patience of a Zen master!

[je_fro]

the package to use is dvd+rw-tools, info here:
http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/

[blackbelt_jones]

I hope, for your sake, that your burner has buffer underrun protection. Otherwise, your results might be less than optimal.

EDIT: Did you also do the transcoding on your $20 PC? If so, you've got the patience of a Zen master!

Pretty sure I have buffer underrun protection. As it happens, I had overlooked a few things, and I have still more crucial software to install. I expect to start transcoding soon. However long it takes, I intend to go to bed as soon as it starts.

[EnigmaOne]

Try attempting the burn with K3B.

I've been delegating all of the data DVDs we require to somebody for whom K3B is an absolute necessity, and we have yet to run into problems. (Not a bad little front-end!)

[Parcival]

Try attempting the burn with K3B.

I thought about recommending that earlier, too, since it's so sweet to burn things with K3B. However, the filestructure for the (movie) DVD still has to be made on the command line so it's rather a detour to fire up K3B - especially for a CLI freak like blackbelt.


(if I could feed an avi or mpg movie into k3b and it would directly create the video DVD, I would do everything with that app)

[je_fro]

(if I could feed an avi or mpg movie into k3b and it would directly create the video DVD, I would do everything with that app)

Unfortunately, that app doesn't exist yet. I'll post here a link to my (ugly)
transcode script--> http://jeffrey.homelinux.org/RRweb**...ytranscode.txt
*replace the ******* above with "/ files /" (without the spaces)..I dunno why that got censored by this forum software

I use that to shrink and create an mpg of a dvd.

Then I use dvdstyler to make a background and menu for the movie, as well as create the VIDEO_TS filesystem (in ~./growisofs_files/).
Then I use growisofs to create the final backup like:

growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvdburner -dvd-video growisofs_files/

Hope that helps you to impress your brother, blackbelt!

[blackbelt_jones]

I thought about recommending that earlier, too, since it's so sweet to burn things with K3B. However, the filestructure for the (movie) DVD still has to be made on the command line so it's rather a detour to fire up K3B - especially for a CLI freak like blackbelt.


(if I could feed an avi or mpg movie into k3b and it would directly create the video DVD, I would do everything with that app)

Me? A CLI freak? Parcival, I can't tell you how I love being described like that! I think it's the pleasure that I take from such an epithet, more than the epithet itself, that tells me that I have made the transformation to mildly technophobic English major to bona fide Linux Geek. Of course, it's kind of ironic, because I hardly used the CLI at all until a couple of years ago, and for burning CDs and DVD's, it's true that I usually turn to K3B. And there's still a lot that I don't know. It was only yesterday that I learned how to halt a CLI app with ctrl-c... but maybe the fact that it's taken me so long to learn is what makes me such a freak... I LOVE to use the CLI! Hell, I'm a superfreak about the CLI! I don't know if chicks dig men who use the command line... but damnit, I think they should.

Around 2AM I ran into a possible brick wall with SUSE10, a certain transcode dependancy wasn't available in the repository where it was supposed to be available. I can't remember if it was packman or guru... so I'm going to come back to this problem later this evening, and try a fresh approach. And why not try K3B? As much as I am into the CLI, I am more into whatever works.

[Parcival]

Me? A CLI freak?

Yes, you are the only one in the forum panicking when a window manager crosses your path where you can't open a shell with a rightclick.

<EDIT>

Oh, I forgot to add that chicks probably don't dig men who use the CLI because in discos they're normally not available.

</EDIT>

[EnigmaOne]

My mistake...didn't notice the transcoding mentions, and assumed that it was filesystem-type data only.

[leonpmu]

Try this site it has all the packages you need for SuSE to do anything regarding multimedia. Hope it helps.

BTW don't forget to enable DMA on ALL of your drives and even 32bit support.

[Syngin]

Good luck. Looking forward to hearing the outcome.