Creating video DVDs with Kmediafactory

DVD Factory


If your holiday videos and TV recordings are fillng up your home computer, burn them onto a DVD with Kmediafactory.

By Marcel Hilzinger

www.sxc.hu

You don't need to be an expert to put your holiday videos and TV recordings on a DVD. A simple DVD tool for Linux is KDE's Kmediafactory [1]. Kmediafactory, which was authored by Finnish developer Petri Damsten, let's you create a video DVD in just three simple steps.

Installation

Although it is quite simple to install Kmediafactory, you need to make sure that a number of multimedia dependencies are addressed (Xine, Dvdauthor, Mjpegtools, Libdvdread, Dvd-slideshow). It is a good idea to use an online repository as the installation source. After adding the repository as a YaST installation source, or adding the repository in Apt/Smart, you can install Kmediafactory along with the required multimedia packages.

Ubuntu users can give the sudo apt-get install kmediafactory command to drop the DVD authoring tool onto their hard disks. This command assumes you have enabled the Universe and Multiverse repositories. Fedora Core users will find the required multimedia packages in the Livna repository [2]; Kmediafactory itself is at [3]. The Kmediafactory Wiki [4] has a detailed installation guide for various Linux distributions. If you wish to use the plugin to burn DVB recordings onto video DVDs, you will also need the Java-based Demux tool, Projectx [5]. Refer to the box titled "Installing Projectx."

Installing Projectx

To set up and use Projectx, you need a Java developer kit (JDK), along with a matching runtime environment (JRE). On Suse Linux, you will want to install the java-1_5_0-sun and java-1_5_0-sun-devel packages; Ubuntu users will discover sun-java5 and sun-java5-jdk in the Multiverse repository.

Give the command sudo apt-get install sun-java5-jdk to install the Java packages, but don't forget to type the following command:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

This selects the newly installed Sun Java as your preferred Java program. Fedora Core has a more roundabout approach to installing Sun Java. You'll find a detailed How-to at [6].

Download the ProjectX_Source_eng_0.90.4.oo.zip, and ProjectX_LanguagePack_0.90.4.oo.zip files from the Projectx homepage. Unpack these two files in the same directory, ProjectX_Source_eng_0.90.4.oo.zip; then add the language files. The language files should be in the ProjectX_Source_0.90.4/resources/ directory. Now give the command sh build.sh in the ProjectX_Source_0.90.4 directory to build the sources and create the ProjectX.jar binary. You can then enter the following to launch the binary:

java -jar ProjectX.jar

To make sure that Kmediafactory finds the program, you need to specify the full path to the .kde/share/apps/kmediafactory/tools/kmf_dvb_edit.sh file below JAR="".

Problems with Ubuntu

The Add DVB module failed to work on Ubuntu stating "No audio found." As a workaround, I first told Projectx to split the DVB recording into its video and audio components (just click on QuickStart in Projectx to do this). I then entered the following command

mplex -o film.mpeg -f 8 video.m2v audio.mp2

This creates a DVD-compatible file titled film.mpeg. The program then converted the file via Add Video with no trouble at all.

Getting Started

To launch Kmediafactory, press [Alt]+[F2] and enter kmediafactory. You can add a video processing script in Tools. As of this writing, the only extension that is available is a DVB import module for Kmediafactory. Users with version 0.5.1 of the program will note that the DVB import module is already integrated. For an up-to-date version, you can download the plugin via Tools | Get new tools.

Your First DVD

Depending on your setup, the Media menu contains the following items: Add DVB, Add slideshow, Add DV, and Add video (Figure 1). Select Add DV for movies imported directly from your camcorder and Add DVB for digital TV recordings. Click Add Video for all other video formats.

Figure 1: The main window in Kmediafactory includes four menu items for adding video files.

In theory, Kmediafactory should be able to handle any movie format that Ffmpeg can handle. In our lab, the program read a number of video files that it was unable to convert.

Clicking on one of the selections pops up the Open - KMediaFactory dialog. The Multiple files create multiple titles checkbox is important. If you check the box, Kmediafactory will create a title for each video file. This can bloat the DVD menu if you don't watch out. Depending on whether you checked the box or not, you will see one entry or multiple entries below Selected Medium.

The second step is to select a design below Template (Figure 2). Don't let the previews in Preview 1, Preview 3, and Preview 6 scare you off - the finished product isn't half as bad as the previews might lead you to expect.

Figure 2: The Kmediafactory template collection could use some additions.

Clicking Preview lets you take a peek at the true DVD menu. Clicking on Get more... takes you to more downloadable themes on the Internet. Right click the template to specify the background image and music for the DVD menu. You can also change the font size if necessary.

The last step is to select the required output format in Output and to press Start. For our first test, DVD directory is our best bet. You can then test the DVD with the integrated player, Xine, or Kaffeine before burning by selecting Tools | DVD preview. To burn a DVD, select K3b Project. Kmediafactory will then automatically launch the KDE burning tool after creating the DVD image. While it is working, Kmediafactory shows a separate progress indicator for each DVD, as well as a progress indicator for the whole project at the bottom of the page.

If KMediaFactory crashes while it is converting a video to DVD format, you might like to try converting the file with Ffmpeg at the command line. The command for converting the file through Ffmpeg is as follows:

ffmpeg -i problemdatei.avi -target pal-dvd ergebnis.mpg

The KDE program will only create the menus in this case. In our lab, this approach saved Kmediafactory from many a crash.

Another issue occurred with DV files. Kmediafactory kept trying to create subtitles from the timestamp information in the movie, but this only worked about once in ten attempts. The program kept on hanging at the Adding subtitles... or Creating Menus step. To resolve this issue, right click on the DV video you are adding below Media, and select Properties | Remove to remove the subtitles. This issue was common to all versions of Kmediafactory, no matter what distribution we used.

Useful Details

If you run Kmediafactory in "Three Step Mode," all your DVDs will look more or less the same. The program creates a menu with chapters for the first movie and lists the other entries below one another. To change the main title of the DVD menu, select Project | Options, and type an intuitive name in Title. For every DVD, you can specify a directory and format, Pal or NTSC. Kmediafactory will store the results.

Kmediafactory automatically splits DV videos and a number of other video formats into chapters. If you need to modify the chapter assignments, or create manual assignments, right click a medium you have added and select Properties. Click Properties again to launch the Kmediafactory editor (Figure 3). You can use the editor to define the chapters and specify the preview image. To do so, select Add and define the title and the starting time. Right clicking an existing chapter pops up a menu where you can specify automatic chapter lengths.

Figure 3: The Kmediafactory Chapter Editor is well hidden but very useful.

The Kmediafactory slideshow module is also useful (Figure 4). Although, in contrast to Mandvd [7], it does not give you a selection of transition modes and thus only exploits a tiny fraction of the dvd-slideshow back-end's potential, the slideshow module makes good use of the abilities it does have. For example, the program generates chapter selections for slideshows and parses the Exif information for the individual images as a short description. By default, the slideshow module also saves the original images. Thus, a DVD with holiday snaps is not only useful for showing to your friends and relatives; it also serves as a backup medium.

Figure 4: The Kmediafactory slideshow module includes some useful functions.

Conclusions

Although the Kmediafactory feature set cannot compete with commercial DVD authoring software on Windows or Mac OS X, the tool has a pleasingly intuitive and simple interface. Given improved stability, and with some help from talented designers to create more templates, Kmediafactory has a strong chance of success.

INFO
[1] Homepage: http://susku.pyhaselka.fi/damu/software/kmediafactory/
[2] Livna Repository: http://rpm.livna.org/configuration.html
[3] Fedora packages: http://www.deadbabylon.de/files/rpms/kmediafactory/
[4] Installation guide: http://susku.pyhaselka.fi/damu/software/kmediafactory/documentation.html
[5] Projectx at Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/project-x
[6] Sun Java on Fedora: http://www.fedorafaq.org/
[7] Mandvd: http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=38347