Thursday, October 15, 2009

avi2dvd - Shell Script

I created a shell script that allows one to convert AVI files to DVD files and the option to burn them. It is definitely not where I want it right now, but I figured I would publish to the world as version 1.0 and see how much I can grow it. Here is my aspirations for future releases:

  1. Allow support for custom directory paths for the DVD files to be stored (currently puts a DVD folder with files in the present working directory the script was ran from).
  2. Allow for a plain text file input with the list of file names. Right now, they all have to be put in manually.
  3. Allow for some minor authoring of the DVD, such as adding a menu, custom chapters, and more, which will depend on my knowledge of dvdauthor in the near future.
  4. Allow option to create an ISO image of the DVD. Again, something I will have to learn.
There are a few bugs I haven't worked out yet, mainly because this program was needed for a friend of mine who needed strict DVD video discs of a bunch of AVI files I had.

  • File name cannot contain spaces. This has something to do with my parser I could easily tweak, but just haven't had time. It is a hassle, though, and once I get done with the conversion and burning of 26 avi files, I will begin work on version 2
  • The path which the DVD files are placed are merged by every succeeding run of the program, so that is just a feature I will have to add to allow custom paths, and/or auto-generated paths so separate runs are treated as separate project outputs.
If you have any feedback, feel free to email me at kenosando@gmail.com. Also, I encourage any tips and hints regarding my script. Thanks!

Link to the script

UPDATE: I did add a minor tweak - date logging into avi2dvd.log just to show how long the entire process takes

UPDATE2: I added support for custom DVD output path. Still working on handling spaces in file names.

2 comments:

Hill Reflects said...

So, your script will convert AVI and then burn it right to a DVD or just create the video and audio files?

Ken Sanders said...

It will give you the option to burn, if you choose not to, the dvd files are ready to be burned in the folder specified by your input.