Quick DVD authoring, with subtitles

Let's say you have a DivX movie (movie.avi) and a subtitles file (subtitles.srt) and you want to burn this into a DVD, which any player (non divx-capable) can play.

This is called DVD authoring, and there are many tools to do the job (though I have not found one that I really like, yet). For such a simple task, a few commands on the console are the simplest option.

1. Transcode move to MPEG-2

See the mencoder documentation at the end - it contains examples for other formats.

mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf \
 -vf scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 \
 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:\
keyint=15:vstrict=0:acodec=ac3:abitrate=192:aspect=16/9 -ofps 25 \
 -o movie.mpg movie.avi

2. Render and multiplex subtitles into movie

Create a file like this one, and save it as sub.xml:

<subpictures>
  <stream>
    <textsub filename="subtitles.srt" characterset="ISO-8859-1"
         fontsize="22.0" font="devedesans.ttf"
horizontal-alignment="center"
         vertical-alignment="bottom" left-margin="60"
right-margin="60"
         top-margin="20" bottom-margin="40" subtitle-fps="25"
         movie-fps="25" movie-width="720" movie-height="574"/>
  </stream>
</subpictures>

Run spumux to create a new mpeg file with the subtitles stream:

spumux -s0 sub.xml < movie.mpg > m_subs.mpg

3. Author the DVD

Finally, we need to tell dvdauthor how to create a dvd. Create a file dvd.xml like this one:

<dvdauthor>
    <vmgm>
    <titleset>
        <titles>
            <subpicture lang="es">
            <pgc>
                <vob file="m_subs.mpg">
            </pgc>
        </titles>
    </titleset>
</dvdauthor>

And run dvdauthor:

dvdauthor -o thedvd -x dvd.xml

4. Round up

Voila! The directory thedvd will contain the DVD structure (not an ISO image). You can test the results with mplayer:
mplayer dvd:// -dvd-device thedvd

and if it looks ok, just burn it into a dvd - k3b can burn this (use new Project -> movie DVD)

At the end you can delete *.mpg files, and the thedvd directory.

References:

• mencoder on dvd authroing: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-vcd-dvd.html
  
• spumux: http://dvdauthor.sourceforge.net/doc/spumux.html