MP4 to ISO to bootable DVD: Figured it Out!

brent

After weeks of fail it took me 6 hours today to figure it out, all trial and error.
Burning a bootable movie DVD in Solus:
FAIL LIST:
devede
handbrake for encoding dvd
vlc for same
xfburn
probably 5 more including flatpaks but don't make me remember them because I'm in a good mood.

I didn't have to go into Endeavour. I did not have to plug in Windows.
This has been vexing me for weeks.
Nothing makes a damn iso. I realized today (a day off) that the root of my problem is I need to take my mp4's to iso and make a bootable disk.

6 hours later, trial and error. 5 cli commands:

$ ffmpeg -i Holiday.mp4 -target ntsc-dvd Holiday.mpg

export VIDEO_FORMAT=NTSC

dvdauthor -o dvd/ -t Holiday.mpg

dvdauthor -o dvd/ -T

mkisofs -dvd-video -o dvd.iso dvd/

I changed directory (cd) to do this all on the desktop.
Brasero took the iso and burned it on DVD.
FFMPEG took the mp4 to mp2 and encoded it properly, where it needed to be--I could not get handbrake or anything else to do this.
dvdauthordid the rest.
edit: the movie was Hepburn/Grant Holiday, a movie made before my dad was born even. always liked it.
last edit: stuff

Axios

brent Glad you got it to do what you want.

I never converted my video stuffs to linux I know how do it on winders and did not want to relearn it
all. (I just Piddle with backing video for the media server now days)
Some stuff is just not as straight forward on Linux.

BuzzPCSOS

brent Glad you made it all work in the end. Creating an iso should involve the same functions as burning directly to DVD. I wonder if the problem was one of resources, converting the media, burning to a disc all at the same same time might have just stressed one part of your system enough to cause delays resulting in another coaster. DVD 'convert media & burn to disc' software used to take a long time to process as I remember. On XP I used to turn off all the power saving functions to prevent coaster manufacture.
Successfully writing to a DVD is all about timing, too much data too quickly cannot be burnt without failure, stalled data delivery will also end in tears.
With an iso all of your data has already been processed so all that is required is to burn it at the right speed.
Just thinking out loud really.

brent

Axios I never converted my video stuffs to linux I know how do it on winders and did not want to relearn it

I have tried like heck to keep my life inside Solus but not always successful. had to go back to winders for a webex meeting (three times) and DVD burner and something else in the last few years including formatting stuff in dskmgmtetc.
I guess it's good for something 🙂.

brent

BuzzPCSOS I wonder if the problem was one of resources, converting the media, burning to a disc all at the same same time might have just stressed one part of your system enough to cause delays resulting in another coaste

I don't think I had a front end/GUI that was worthy of the task is my conclusion. None of them could create an ISO and none of them could encode it so a GUI program would accept it to burn. That, as you indicated, might of been a resource problem.

I didn't realize until this morning that what I'm doing isn't commonly done these days so the weapons for an undertaking like this aren't likely common/reliable.

Getting down and dirty in the cli was fine with me.
Result, btw, was mixed as far as final quality. I'm going to see if I can dial it in better in the ffmpeg and dvdauthor settings as far a quality. Thanks for your response.

Axios

brent Thats what happens when you dont have a lossless original
Usually just gets worse you have to pick one that you can live with.
I am sure there are probably ways to improve it some but beyond my skill at the moment.
Understanding all the video formats can drive one insane.

brent

Axios
https://www.baeldung.com/linux/ffmpeg-best-quality-conversion

that was a golden tutorial right there ^^. that's where I'm going start playing. [If anybody goes to this site tab at the top where 'guides' are. far out.]

You are right that the quality has to be there in the original mp4 movie, which usually its not. All the rest is lipstick/pig but mine went from OK quality to less-than-OK so some tweaks might be in order to preserve the OK quality.
It's not something I want to spend a lot of time on 🙂.

Harvey

If you re-encode a video there will always be quality loss. It's like making a copy of a VHS tape. The copy will not be as good as the original master and if you make a copy of that copy the degradation starts getting more and more noticeable the further you get away from the master until its completely unwatchable.

EDIT:
I've had friends get confused about the above analogy, the same loss does not happen when you copy a file, that is not re-encoding.

I guess my question is, why use DVDs?

I would just make sure I had a device that can play mkv/mp4/avi (Pretty much every TV/DVD/Bluray Player and streaming stick) and either stream from my PC to that device or copy the movies/tv shows to a USB drive and play off that. Burning a DVD in 2025 just makes no sense to me, especially if you have a device that you can install Jellyfin on.

brent

Harvey I guess my question is, why use DVDs?

I would just make sure I had a device that can play mkv/mp4/avi (Pretty much every TV/DVD/Bluray Player and streaming stick) and either stream from my PC to that device or copy the movies/tv shows to a USB drive and play off that. Burning a DVD in 2025 just makes no sense to me, especially if you have a device that you can install Jellyfin on.

You are right. As far as movies and digital I just let modernization pass me by on visual media. My smart TV is just a TV and DVD player--quite old school. Me and the sig. other enjoy getting 50 cent movies at thrift stores so we just have accumulated plastic...and it's a hard habit to break.

It really would ease lots of pain if I used the smart tv like a smart tv and I know it can handle "mkv/mp4/avi" when I get around to letting it and my main PC shake hands.

I'm running into a lot of stuff lately I used to love, on digital (mp4/avi/etc sentimental?) that I can't find at 50 cent thrift stores...so the plan to go Full DVD --I thought--was foolproof and the easiest way out.
HAHAHAHA the joke was on me, but live and learn.

Harvey If you re-encode a video there will always be quality loss.

that's a natural generational copy result...didn't think it would be as dramatic as it was, and if someone had told me those words ^^ at the beginning in some article somewhere in all the research I think I would of approached this different.

When I fail, but learn a sh**-load in my failing, I never feel too bad in these cases.
Note to self: modernize.
Harvey I appreciate the reply.
*Everyone on this thread, actually.

BuzzPCSOS

brent You can add an extra to your TV that will allow you to play most of your films in original format without involving conversion losses.
An online search at the usual market places for "tv media player mkv mp4 avi" should find you what you need for not too many $$. Make sure you have appropriate connections on your TV and check that you have the correct selection for NTSC/PAL.
Good luck

brent

BuzzPCSOS
Holy crap I shoulda thought of this before.

My TV has a usb port!

It plays avi, mkg, mp4 just fine.
Good god what was I thinking. Went to best buy and got 128GB stick and loaded it up.

BuzzPCSOS

brent 😆 This was a suggestion that kept on being made when you first wanted to write movies to DVDs. I think at one point you were even going off to check out what connectivity your TV had. Like so many good ideas it probably got lost while investing in a good nights sleep.
I just hope you didn't delete your originals after converting to DVD!
You may find that some will not play on the TVs built-in media player, at this point Handbrake is your friend. Happy viewing.

brent

BuzzPCSOS You may find that some will not play on the TVs built-in media player,

mp4 and mkv played--it's a big 10 year old Samsung. have not tried avi. will cross the non-play bridge when I have to and sure I will have to. The brief reading I did of the samsungs/playback is they usually have a big internal codec library so we will see how it goes.

BuzzPCSOS at this point Handbrake is your friend.

I've done great work in Handbrake--one of my favorite tools in repo. I have more faith I could get something 264/play ready than I have faith in getting a source DVD-ready 🙂

BuzzPCSOS I think at one point you were even going off to check out what connectivity your TV had.

Was going to but so uncomfortable hooking it up to the wifi. I'm not hip in 2025 in many ways nor am I sure I wan't to be. USB stick with movies will be my bridge to the future for now.

BuzzPCSOS Like so many good ideas it probably got lost while investing in a good nights sleep.

story of my life

BuzzPCSOS I just hope you didn't delete your originals after converting to DVD!

one of my few smart investments was a 1TB external for backups and storage. got 'em all.

Looking at the two sample movies I inspected, it keeps/mirrors the quality of the original which is all I could really hope for i.e. it doesn't degrade quality as a copy of a copy would.
I'm not unhappy at this arrangement and a 128GB 3.0 SansDisk was surprisingly cheap like 12 bones.

Thanks for consulting me (and @axios) on my goofball projects. I like to dive in and flail better than I like to read the FM 😉 . This board is invaluable for that: the voices of experience and anecdote are 1000X more useful to me than a clinical dry AI-written article.

Harvey

That was my point, this isn't new tech so odds are you already own something that can be streamed to or play off USB.

You will probably find limitations such as h265 support and maybe your device can't change the default audio track but its better than dealing with DVDs.

brent

Harvey That was my point, this isn't new tech so odds are you already own something that can be streamed to or play off USB.

you did raise all this, I remember, and thank you. And I got around to it finally 🙂

Axios

We all have our moments.