[MPlayer-users] dvd video format question

[Aaron Peterson]

>>I've read the man page and know enough to watch avi, divx, dvd with
>>mplayer and how to use mencoder to take dvd video to ffmpeg or xvid, blah
>>blah.  not that hard right?  I am no video guru (if that isn't obvious by
>>now) and I am curious what format of video goes on a dvd.  if i
>> understand
>>what i've read correctly, this is mpeg1 or mpeg2?  are there any other

> both codecs (mpeg1 and mpeg2) can go on a dvd; the format must be mpeg-ps.
> Mencoder can generate mpeg files, but this is only the beginning:
> target files must follow cerrain restrictions (frame dimensions, GOP
> length, VBV size, max bitrate and many others),
> then  you have to remux these files with mplex or dvb-mplex to add Nav
> packets and then add them to
> a dvd structure by an authoring  program such as dvdauthor.
>
> Search the archive of this ML and you will find all the answers.

>>considerations for creating dvd video, and how can I use mencoder to take
>>an avi to a format that i could burn on a dvd?  Perhaps off topic, but
>> any
>>information i could get about creating the other non-video files that go
>>on a dvd would be appreciated too.  Suggestions and explaination are very
>>welcome.  Of course, RTFM is acceptable too if anyone can point me to
>> some
>>good reading on this subject. (links, books, etc...)

> Afaik www.mpucoder.com has an archive of DVD docs, but you have to pay
> to know (unacceptable for me).

I'm reading http://mightylegends.zapto.org/dvd/dvdauthor_howto.php and
that seems informative (as long as it's not wrong), but what i'm really
looking to do is take a single track from the dvd (i'm sure track is the
wrong term) and create a new dvd with it at full quality.  so if my
original dvd contained 7G of data, maybe i could just take the movie
portion that i want and get it under the 4.7 DVD-R limit type thing.  I
will be working on other projects down the road where I will want to take
avi to DVD as well.  In any case, i'm wondering if DVD -> DVD is more
simple because the video is already formatted for DVD?  maybe options like
-ovc copy -oac copy would give me all i need besides the ifo files, etc...
 is that the case?

heh.  turns out searching google turned up much better results than
searching the mplayer-users archive.  maybe i just didn't know what terms
to search for...  i'm sure the information is there, but how do i find it?

aaron