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-rip-tv.com(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!
videotrans movie-make-title(1)