Penguin
Annotated edit history of dvdauthor version 12, including all changes. View license author blame.
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4 AristotlePagaltzis 1 [dvdauthor | http://dvdauthor.sf.net/] is a suite of programs for authoring [DVD-Video|DVDVideo] discs and performing related tasks.
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4 AristotlePagaltzis 3 * __dvdauthor__ itself takes a bunch of [MPEG] files representing the titles and menus, and puts them together according to the instructions in an [XML] file.
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4 AristotlePagaltzis 7 * __dvdunauthor__ performs the opposite task to <tt>dvdauthor</tt>: given the files making up a DVD-Video title, it separates out the individual menus and titles into separate [MPEG] files, and constructs an [XML] file that <tt>dvdauthor</tt> can use to put them together again.
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6 LawrenceDoliveiro 11 * __spumux__ constructs the ''subpictures'' used for subtitles and menu buttons, and ''multiplexes'' them onto [MPEG]-2 files, according to instructions in an [XML] file.
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17 * __spuunmux__ performs the opposite task to <tt>spumux</tt>: given an [MPEG]-2 file containing a subpicture or menu definition, it extracts the subpicture layer into separate [PNG] files, and creates an [XML] file that <tt>spumux</tt> can use to put them together again.
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21 * __mpeg2desc__ can produce a dump of the types of packet headers present in an MPEG file, and also extract audio and video streams into separate files.
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25 * __dvddirdel__ is a simple script to perform safe deletion of an output directory and its contents as created by a previous run of <tt>dvdauthor</tt>. It is safer than “<tt>rm -rf</tt>” in that it only deletes the directories and files that would form part of a DVD-Video directory structure, and nothing else. This way, if you accidentally specify the wrong directory to delete, it will more likely fail with an error, than cause you to lose important data.
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29 <tt>spumux</tt> embeds information in the MPEG files it generates in a private format that is decoded by <tt>dvdauthor</tt> for use in controlling generation of the final output files:
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31 * The locations and dimensions of buttons are given to <tt>spumux</tt>. <tt>dvdauthor</tt> gets this information from the MPEG files generated by <tt>spumux</tt>. Also, buttons are referred to by user-specified names in both <tt>spumux</tt> and <tt>dvdauthor</tt>, even though DVD-Video doesn't support button names.
32 * <tt>spumux</tt> allows the specification of multiple graphic files, each potentially containing a different set of colours, even though DVD-Video subpictures only allow a maximum of 4 colours to be displayed at once from a maximum palette of 16 colours. <tt>spumux</tt> embeds information about the colours actually used, and <tt>dvdauthor</tt> collects this to correctly encode the generated subpicture pixels and build the complete palette.
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12 LawrenceDoliveiro 34 Note a subtle point: menus can have 4 different colours, and the colours can be different between the different states of normal, highlighted and selected. But there is only one subpicture image shared between these three states, and having 2 bits per pixel, it is restricted to 4 different pixel values. Thus, even though you specify the appearance of the states with separate image files, <tt>spumux</tt> [combines them into one|http://www.floatinginspace.za.org/spumux/spumux.html] and will flag an error if the result cannot be represented within 2 bits per pixel.
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9 LawrenceDoliveiro 36 <tt>dvdunauthor</tt> and <tt>spuunmux</tt> are very useful for trying to understand the structure of existing DVD-Video titles. Note, however, that <tt>dvdunauthor</tt> puts some additional tags into the XML files it creates that the current version (0.6.14) of <tt>dvdauthor</tt> doesn't understand.
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38 Additional useful information about DVDAuthor has been collected at the [DVDAuthor Wiki | http://nfs.shawnfumo.com/wiki/DVDAuthor/Overview].
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4 AristotlePagaltzis 40 ['Q' DVD-Author | http://qdvdauthor.sf.net/] is a [GUI]-based tool to ease the job of [DVD] authoring. It can generate the [XML] files and command sequences necessary to drive the various CommandLine utilities in the <tt>dvdauthor</tt> suite.
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5 LawrenceDoliveiro 42 <tt>qdvdauthor</tt> and the <tt>dvdauthor</tt> documentation examples make heavy use of the [MJPEG Tools | http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net/] package for generation of [MPEG] files and the like. However, all these operations can be performed just as readily with [FFmpeg].