This is a "plugin" for the Video Disk Recorder (VDR).

Written by:                  Sascha Volkenandt <sascha at akv-soft dot de>
                             sponsored by Open Source Factory
                             designed for xeatre.tv

Project's homepage:          http://www.xeatre.tv/community/burn/

Latest version available at: http://www.xeatre.tv/community/burn/

See the file COPYING for license information.


Purpose
-------

This Plugin enables VDR to write compliant DVDs from VDR recordings while
being able to control the process and to watch progress from inside VDRs
on-screen-display. If the selected recordings don't fit the DVD, the video
tracks are requantized (shrinked) automatically.

The created menus support multipage-descriptions (in case the recording summary
exceeds one page).


Requirements
------------

g++ >= 3.3       - http://gcc.gnu.org/
  ** Tested with 3.3.5 (Debian)
  ** Always compile-checked with 4.1

boost >= 1.32.0  - http://www.boost.org
  ** If not available for your distribution, you can also use
  ** http://linux.kompiliert.net/contrib/boost-for-burn-1.33.0.tgz
  ** (see below)

vdrsync.pl       - http://vdrsync.vdrportal.de
  ** Tested with 0.1.3PRE1-050322
  ** http://vdrsync.vdr-portal.de/releases/vdrsync-050322.tgz

ALTERNATIVE for vdrsync.pl:
ProjectX         - http://www.lucike.info/index.htm?http://www.lucike.info/page_projectx.htm
  ** Tested with 0.90.4 on Blackdown JRE 1.4.2

SUBTITLE SUPPORT:
pxsup2dast       - http://www.guru-group.fi/~too/sw/m2vmp2cut/

requant          - http://metakine.com/files
  ** ATTN: Currently only the snapshot from around July 2004 is supported
  ** For convenience, I've uploaded the package to:
  ** http://www.xeatre.tv/community/burn/contrib/M2VRequantizer.tar.gz

GD               - http://www.boutell.com/gd/
  ** Texted with 2.0.33 (Debian Sarge: libgd2-noxpm[-dev] or libgd2-xpm[-dev])
  ** needs at least PNG and FreeType support

dvdauthor        - http://dvdauthor.sourceforge.net
  ** Tested with 0.6.10
  ** recommended: 0.6.12-alpha-2992-GfD-5 from
  ** http://www.videohelp.com/~gfd/edcounter.php?file=download/dvdauthor-0.6.12-alpha-2992-GfD-5.zip
  ** if you want to create discs with titles longer than 10000 seconds

growisofs
(dvd+rwtools)    - http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW
  ** Tested with 5.21
  ** needs mkisofs (tested 2.01)

png2yuv
mpeg2enc
mplex
(mjpegtools)     - http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net/
  ** Tested with 1.6.2

Installation
------------

1. Untar the archive inside VDR's plugin-source folder

   vdr-1.4.2 # tar xvfz -C PLUGINS/src vdr-burn-0.1.0.tgz

2. (optional) If your distributor doesn't provide development packages for the
   boost libraries (at lease 1.32.0), download the boost-for-burn package from
   the URL posted in the Requirements section above, and untar it inside the
   plugin's source directory

   vdr-1.4.2 # tar xvfz -C PLUGINS/src/burn boost-for-burn-1.33.0.tgz

3. Recompile VDR and Plugins

   vdr-1.4.2 # make plugins-clean clean vdr plugins

3b.(optional) Change the default temporary folder, the default DVD writer device
   and the default ISO directory with TMPDIR (default: /tmp),
   DVDDEV (default: /dev/dvd) and ISODIR (default: /pub/export)

   vdr-1.4.2 # make DVDDEV=/dev/cdrecorder ISODIR=/export plugins

4. Copy the scripts vdrburn-dvd.sh, vdrburn-archive.sh and the program
   burn-buffers to some location inside your $PATH.

   vdr-1.4.2 # cp PLUGINS/src/burn/*.sh /usr/bin/
   vdr-1.4.2 # cp PLUGINS/src/burn/burn-buffers /usr/bin/burn-buffers

5. Copy the font file and menu image templates into "plugins/burn" inside your
   VDR configuration directory (usually /video0 or /etc/vdr)

   vdr-1.4.2 # cp -a PLUGINS/src/burn/burn /etc/vdr/plugins/

6. (optional) Create a directory "skins" in "plugins/burn" inside your VDR
   configuration directory. Create sub-directories for each skin you'd like
   to be offered by the plugin. Place menu-bg.png and/or menu-button.png files
   inside to use them as skins for the menus of your DVDs.

   vdr-1.4.2 # mkdir /etc/vdr/plugins/burn/skins
   vdr-1.4.2 # mkdir /etc/vdr/plugins/burn/skins/Star_Trek_TNG
   vdr-1.4.2 # cp ~/images/star_trek_pal.png \
                     /etc/vdr/plugins/burn/skins/Star_Trek_TNG/menu-bg.png

7. Enjoy! :-)


Usage
-----

When starting VDR and the Plugin, you can specify the directory where the
temporary files will reside, your DVD recorder device, and optionally a
directory where a possible ISO is placed. If you specify both a dvd recorder
and an iso directory here or at compile time (see above, 3b), you can choose
in the OSD what actions the plugin will take (create an ISO, burn on-the-fly,
or do both). Additionally, you have to define a temporary directory and a data
directory. The temporary directory MUST reside on a filesystem capable of
handling symlinks and fifos, while the data directory must reside on a
filesystem with enough free disk space. See vdr -P burn -h for a syntax
explanation.

To start a new DVD Project, you first have to mark one or several recordings
for burning. You will be shown the recordings upon entering the plugin's
submenu. Navigate as usual, and press the "red" button to select a recording.

Now, you can switch to the job view with the "blue" button. You will see
an overview of the selected recordings along with some additional information.
You can edit the recording and disc titles by selecting such an entry and
pressing the "right" button. Editing is done as known from other VDR menus
(like when editing channel names). Press "Ok" to confirm and save the title.

You can also delete recordings from that list and change the order of
recordingswith the "green" and "yellow" buttons. You can add recordings by
leaving the plugin and selecting addigional recordings from the recordings
menu.

Pressing "Ok" on a recording will open a tracks submenu. Here, you can deselect
certain audio-tracks with the "red" button (be careful to leave at least one
audio track active), and reorder them with the "green" button. Press "back" to
leave the submenu.

Between the recording titles and the disc info, you see a progressbar which
shows how much space the recordings would consume on a 4,7GB DVD+-R(W). If
space exceeds a limit, an additional warning "Recordings could be shrinked!"
is displayed.

The second possible DVD type, "Archive-Disc", just burns the VDR recording
structure onto the DVD without shrinking, useful in conjunction with the
Media-Detection Plugin, which can detect and play such discs.

Pressing "red" now starts the necessary processes. If you place an empty
DVD+-R(W) into your drive, the job will run and finish, and after some time
(depending on the speed of your computer) the tray will open and the disc is
finished. Anyway, you will be asked to place an empty disc into the drive if
you forget it.

You will notice that the display changes after you pressed the "red" button.
You can switch between all displays using the "blue" button. This way you
can enqueue additional jobs while one job is processed. In the status display,
you can also see a hint on the progress (although the bar is not too precise)
and whether a job crashed for some reason. If a job is marked as "crashed",
you could examine the logfiles in /video/.vdr-burn.XXXXX. All intermediate
files (including logs) are deleted if you remove the erroneous job from the
status display (using the "yellow" button). You can also re-edit canceled or
crashed jobs to alter the settings and try again with the "green" button.


Caveats
-------

- No transcoding is done (will fail with non-DVD-compliant DVB-streams)