NAME¶
movie-make-title - Creates a title sequence that can be used to create a
menu with
movie-title
SYNOPSIS¶
movie-make-title -o output -s start_time
-e end_time [-n animation] -m mode source_movie
DESCRIPTION¶
This program takes exactly one movie file in any format that
mplayer
understands and converts part of that file into a directory full of JPEG files
and a WAV file that can be used by the
movie-title program to create
menus for DVDs with more than one movie on them.
The way this works is the following: this program rips part of the source movie
and uses that ripped part as the animated background of the menu that
movie-title will create. The foreground of the menus are rectangle with
borders around them that act like little TV sets: they display the first few
seconds of each movie on the DVD.
The best way to grasp how the system works is by trying it out for yourself.
OPTIONS¶
The following options are available:
- -o output
- Specifies the name of the directory that should be created and will
contain a large number of JPEG files and a WAV file for the audio of the
title sequence. Personally, I usually use the name title (short and
to-the-point).
- -s start_time
- Specifies the starting time (in seconds) of the part of the source movie
that you want to rip.
- I usually determine this time by playing the source movie with
mplayer and then looking at the status line that mplayer
continually updates at the moment that the clip that you want as a title
starts. Then, I usually subtract about 5 seconds because mplayer is
unable to seek to exact positions when ripping a part of a movie. Usually,
the seeking resolution is about 5 to 10 seconds, and that is why I
subtract 5 seconds.
- While the movie part is being ripped, the normal mplayer output
will be displayed. If you see that mplayer starts at a time that is
later than the start of your clip, press CTRL-C and restart the
program with an earlier starting time.
- -e end_time
- Specifies the ending time (in seconds) of the part of the source movie
that you want to rip.
- I usually determine this time by playing the source movie with
mplayer and then looking at the status line that mplayer
continually updates at the moment that the clip that you want as a title
ends. Then, I usually add about 5 seconds because mplayer is unable
to stop at exact positions when ripping a part of a movie. Usually, the
seeking resolution is about 5 to 10 seconds, and that is why I add 5
seconds.
- While the movie part is being ripped, the normal mplayer output
will be displayed. If you see that mplayer ends at a time that is
earlier than the end of your clip, restart the program with a later ending
time.
- -n animation
- Using this option, you can tell the program what kind of menu you would
like to create. The possible arguments are none (which will cause a
menu to be created that will have no previews of the movies, but will only
display the background movie, the titles of the main movies and the
navigation buttons), static (which will cause a menu to be created
that will display a preview image of each movie, but that is not animated)
and animated (which will cause a menu to be created that will
display picture-in-picture animated previews of the movies).
- If you don't specify this option, the default will be
animated.
- -m mode
- Specify either pal or ntsc, depending on whether you are
creating a PAL or NTSC DVD. NTSC is an American TV standard, PAL is
usually used in Europe and other parts of the world.
DIAGNOSTICS¶
If this program is called with a incorrect set of parameters, it will print a
diagnostic message telling the user what went wrong. Also, it will then print
its usage information, listing all the options and their meanings.
If the program tells you "
ERROR: Cannot find video size for
file", this means that
mplayer was unable to read the file
or the file is stored in a format that it does not understand. In this case,
movie-make-title will not be able to do its work for you.
The program tells you what it is doing while it is running.
POSTPROCESSING¶
Because the ripping of a part of a movie is not an exact science because of the
seeking resolution that
mplayer offers, you must edit the result of
this program by hand. That means that you will have to remove any images that
not belong at the start and end of your title sequence. Do not remove any
images in the middle of the title sequence: any missing image will be seen as
the end of the sequence.
I usually use the program
xv (which is an image viewer for X windows,
which you can download at
http://www.trilon.com/xv/xv.html) to look at
all the images in the directory that you specified with the
-o option
(in my case, I run
xv title/*.jpg). Then I remove any images at
the start of the sequence and at the end of the sequence that are not actually
a part of the title sequence that I had in mind.
Just as the images have to be adjusted, the audio file that was produced will
have to be edited as well. You will have to chop off the audio parts at the
beginning and the end that you do not want. The file to edit is
title.wav in the directory that you specified with the
-o
option. I usually edit the WAV file with
sweep, a really nice audio
editing program for X windows, which may be downloaded from
http://sweep.sourceforge.net/.
EXAMPLE¶
- The command line that I use most often is:
- movie-make-title -o title -m pal \
-s 123 -e 234
input_file.avi
This command line simply takes the input file (in AVI format in this case) and
converts it for use with
movie-title. In this case, I'm ripping the
part of the movie that starts at second 123 (two minutes and three seconds
into the movie) and ends at second 234 (nearly four minutes into the movie).
SEE ALSO¶
videotrans(1),
movie-title(1),
movie-make-title-simple(1),
movie-to-dvd(1),
movie-compare-dvd(1),
movie-rip-epg.data(1)
AUTHOR¶
The author is Sven Berkvens-Matthijsse (sven@berkvens.net). Please send any
project related e-mail to
videotrans@berkvens.net.
BUGS¶
None known. Please report any bugs to
videotrans@berkvens.net!