Producing video DVDs and slideshows with 2ManDVD

The rapid developments in consumer electronics and computer technology have made it easier for home users to venture into video production. To present your films, photos, and music on TV with your DVD player, you only need a Linux machine and the 2ManDVD [1] program, with which you can easily produce professional-looking multimedia DVDs.

Off We Go

2ManDVD used to be available for almost all Linux distributions. Unfortunately, many of the libraries it uses are now quite old. This has made it a problem to maintain in Ubuntu, so it was removed as of 13.10 – Raring Ringtail. For Trusty and Utopic, you'll have to compile 2ManDVD from source and modify some of the source code.

To begin, download the compressed file with the source [2]. Decompress it and cd into the directory.

Open the videowrapper.cpp and search for the line that says:

if (av_open_input_file(&pFormatCtx,\
  filename.toAscii().data(),NULL,0,NULL)!=0)

and change it to:

if (avformat_open_input(&pFormatCtx,\
  filename.toAscii().data(),NULL,0)!=0)

Because 2ManDVD uses Qt4, and Ubuntu now installs Qt5 by default, you'll have to download the correct Qt tools and environment:

$ sudo apt-get install qt4-qmake \
  qt4-default libavutil-dev

Finally, you have to install some extra development libraries so you can get a clean compile:

$ sudo apt-get install libavcodec-dev \
  libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libsdl-dev libx264-dev

Now, you can compile with:

$ qmake-qt4 2ManDVD.pro
$ make
$ sudo make install

2ManDVD relies heavily on ffmpeg , mplayer , and others, but the Ubuntu packagers have dropped some of these programs in favor of equivalent (but not identical) packages in more modern releases. It would be impossible to cover all the active Ubuntu releases out there, so if 2ManDVD does complain about "Missing Dependencies" when booting, you can visit the FAQ [3] for further information. This page contains very detailed and accurate instructions on how to compile and install the most common packages 2ManDVD needs.

Firing Up

After startup, 2ManDVD presents some setting options on an input screen for video standards and the working directory. It's advisable to have a separate directory put aside with enough GB of free space to work on projects without the risk of running out of memory. The program provides a choice between the PAL and NTSC video standards only, and in the 4:3 or 16:9 formats. Although these choices may not cover all form factors, they're likely sufficient for most applications. Once these settings are made, large buttons let you select the slideshow or DVD production option. You can also play the slideshow and open an existing project (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Starting the software requires setting only four options.