tovid manual(1)

  Name

tovid: Convert video to (S)VCD/DVD format

  Description

tovid converts arbitrary video files into (S)VCD/DVD-compliant MPEG format, suitable for burning to CD/DVD-R for playback on a standalone DVD player.

  Usage

tovid [OPTIONS] -in INFILE -out OUTPREFIX

Where INFILE is any multimedia video file, and OUTPREFIX is what you want to call the output file, minus the file extension. OPTIONS are additional customizations, described below.

By default, you will (hopefully) end up with an NTSC DVD-compliant MPEG-2 video file; if you burn this file to a DVD-R, it should be playable on most DVD players.

For example:

tovid -in foo.avi -out foo_encoded
    Convert 'foo.avi' to NTSC DVD format, saving to 'foo_encoded.mpg'.

tovid -pal -vcd foo.avi -out foo_encoded
    Convert 'foo.avi' to PAL VCD format, saving to 'foo_encoded.mpg'.

  Basic options

-v, -version
    Print tovid version number only, then exit.

-quiet
    Reduce output to the console.

-fake
    Do not actually encode; only print the commands (mplayer, mpeg2enc etc.) that would be executed. Useful in debugging; have tovid give you the commands, and run them manually.

-ffmpeg
    Use ffmpeg for video encoding, instead of mplayer/mpeg2enc. Try this if you have any problems with the default encoding method. Using this option, encoding will be considerably faster. Works with -vcd, -svcd, and -dvd.

  Television standards

-ntsc
    NTSC format video (USA, Americas) (default)

-ntscfilm
    NTSC-film format video

-pal
    PAL format video (Europe and others)

  Formats

Standard formats, should be playable in most DVD players:

-dvd
    (720x480 NTSC, 720x576 PAL) DVD-compatible output (default)

-half-dvd
    (352x480 NTSC, 352x576 PAL) Half-D1-compatible output

-svcd
    (480x480 NTSC, 480x576 PAL) Super VideoCD-compatible output

-dvd-vcd
    (352x240 NTSC, 352x288 PAL) VCD-on-DVD output

-vcd
    (352x240 NTSC, 352x288 PAL) VideoCD-compatible output

Non-standard formats, playable in some DVD players:

-kvcd
    (352x240 NTSC, 352x288 PAL) KVCD-enhanced long-playing video CD

-kdvd
    (720x480 NTSC, 720x576 PAL) KVCD-enhanced long-playing DVD

-kvcdx3
    (528x480 NTSC, 520x576 PAL) KVCDx3 specification

-kvcdx3a
    (544x480 NTSC, 544x576 PAL) KVCDx3a specification (slightly wider)

-bdvd
    (720x480 NTSC, 720x576 PAL) BVCD-enhanced long-playing DVD

See kvcd.net (http://kvcd.net/) for details on the KVCD specification. Please note that KVCD ("K Video Compression Dynamics") is the name of a compression scheme that can be applied to any MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 video, and has little to do with VCD ("Video Compact Disc"), which is the name of a standard video disc format.

  Advanced options

  Aspect ratios

tovid automatically determines aspect ratio of the input video by playing it in mplayer. If your video plays with correct aspect in mplayer, you should not need to override the default tovid behavior.

If mplayer does not play your video with correct aspect, you may provide an explicit aspect ratio in one of several ways:

-full
    Same as -aspect 4:3

-wide
    Same as -aspect 16:9

-panavision
    Same as -aspect 235:100

-aspect WIDTH:HEIGHT
    Custom aspect, where WIDTH and HEIGHT are integers.

NOTE: This is the INPUT aspect ratio. tovid chooses an optimal output aspect ratio for the selected disc format (VCD, DVD, etc.) and does the appropriate letterboxing or anamorphic scaling.

  Video stream options

-quality NUM (default 6)
    Desired output quality, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 giving the best quality at the expense of a larger output file. Default is 6. Output size can vary by approximately a factor of 4 (that is, -quality 1 output can be 1/4 the size of -quality 10 output). Your results may vary. WARNING: With -quality 10, the output bitrate may be too high for your hardware DVD player to handle. Stick with 9 or lower unless you have phenomenally good eyesight. At present, this option affects both output bitrate and quantization (but may, in the future, affect other quality/size-related attributes). Use -vbitrate if you want to explicitly provide a maximum bitrate.

-vbitrate NUM
    Maximum bitrate to use for video (in kbits/sec). Must be within allowable limits for the given format. Overrides default values. Ignored for VCD, which must be constant bitrate.

-interlaced
    Do interlaced encoding of the input video (top fields first). Use this option if your video is interlaced, and you want to preserve as much picture quality as possible. This option is ignored for VCD, which doesn't support it. You can tell your source video is interlaced by playing it, and pausing during a scene with horizontal motion; if you see a "comb" effect at the edges of objects in the scene, you have interlaced video. Use this option to encode it properly. If you would prefer to have output in progressive format, use -progressive. If you have a DV camera, use -interlaced_bf since DV footage is generally bottom fields first.

-interlaced_bf
    Do interlaced encoding of the input video (bottom fields first).

-deinterlace | -progressive
    Convert interlaced source video into progressive output video. Because deinterlacing works by averaging fields together, some picture quality is invariably lost. Uses an adaptive kernel deinterlacer (kerndeint), or, if that's not available, the libavcodec deinterlacer (lavcdeint).

-mkvsub LANG (EXPERIMENTAL)
    Attempt to encode an integrated subtitle stream (such as may be found in Matroska .mkv files) in the given language code (eng, jpn, etc.) May work for other formats.

-autosubs
    Automatically include subtitle files with the same name as the input video.

-subtitles FILE
    Get subtitles from FILE and encode them into the video. WARNING: This hard-codes the subtitles into the video, and you cannot turn them off while viewing the video. By default, no subtitles are loaded. If your video is already compliant with the chosen output format, it will be re-encoded to include the subtitles.

-type {live|animation|bw}
    Optimize video encoding for different kinds of video. Use 'live' (default) for live-action video, use 'animation' for cartoons or anime, and 'bw' for black-and-white video. This option currently only has an effect with KVCD/KSVCD output formats; other formats may support this in the future.

-safe PERCENT
    Fit the video within a safe area defined by PERCENT. For example, -safe 90% will scale the video to 90% of the width/height of the output resolution, and pad the edges with a black border. Use this if some of the picture is cut off when played on your TV. The percent sign is optional.

-filters {none,denoise,deblock,contrast,all} (default none)
    Apply post-processing filters to enhance the video. If your input video is very high quality, use 'none'. If your input video is grainy, use 'denoise'; if it looks washed out or faded, use 'contrast'. You can use multiple filters separated by commas. To apply all filters, use 'all'.

-fps RATIO
    Force input video to be interpreted as RATIO frames per second. May be necessary for some ASF, MOV, or other videos. RATIO should be an integer ratio such as "24000:1001" (23.976fps), "30000:1001" (29.97fps), or "25:1" (25fps). This option is temporary, and may disappear in future releases. (Hint: To convert a decimal like 23.976 to an integer ratio, just multiply by 1000, i.e. 23976:1000)

-crop WIDTH:HEIGHT:X:Y
    Crop a portion of the video WIDTH by HEIGHT in size, with the top-left corner at X, Y.

  Audio stream options

-normalize [VOLUME]
    If used without VOLUME argument, analyze the audio stream and then normalize the volume of the audio. This is useful if the audio is too quiet or too loud, or you want to make volume consistent for a bunch of videos. Similar to running normalize without any parameters. The default is -12dB average level with 0dB gain. If the optional VOLUME argument is supplied, ffmpeg will be used instead to increase or decrease the volume. An argument of 256 is normal volume. This option is useful for -slice, because there are sync issues if audio and video are encoded separately after a seek.

-amplitude NUM[dB]
    In addition to analyzing and normalizing, apply the gain to the audio such that the 'average' (RMS) sound level is NUM. Valid values range 0.0 - 1.0, with 0.0 being silent and 1.0 being full scale. Use NUMdB for a decibel gain below full scale (the default without -amplitude is -12dB).

-abitrate NUM
    Encode audio at NUM kilobits per second. Reasonable values include 128, 224, and 384. The default is 224 kbits/sec, good enough for most encodings. The value must be within the allowable range for the chosen disc format; Ignored for VCD, which must be 224.

-audiotrack NUM
    Encode the given audio track, if the input video has multiple audio tracks. NUM is 1 for the first track, 2 for the second, etc. You may also provide a list of tracks, separated by spaces or commas, for example -audiotrack 3,1,2. Use idvid on your source video to determine which audio tracks it contains.

-async NUM
    Adjust audio synchronization by NUM seconds.

  Other options

-config FILE
    Read configuration from FILE, containing 'tovid' alone on the first line, and free-formatted (whitespace-separated) tovid command-line options on remaining lines.

-force
    Force encoding of already-compliant video or audio streams.

-overwrite
    Overwrite any existing output files (with the same name as the given -out option).

-priority {low|medium|high}
    Sets the main encoding process to the given priority. With high priority, it may take other programs longer to load and respond. With lower priority, other programs will be more responsive, but encoding may take 30-40% longer. The default is high priority.

-discsize NUM
    When encoding, tovid automatically splits the output file into several pieces if it exceeds the size of the target media. This option sets the desired target DVD/CD-R size to NUM mebibytes (MiB, 2^20). By default, splitting occurs at 700 for CD, 4300 for DVD. Use higher values at your own risk. Use 650 or lower if you plan to burn to smaller-capacity CDs. Doesn't work with the -ffmpeg option.

-fit NUM
    Fit the output file into NUM MiB. Rather than using default (or specified) video bitrates, tovid will calculate the correct video bitrate that will limit the final output size to NUM MiB. This is different than -discsize, which cuts the final file into NUM MiB pieces. -fit makes sure that the file never exceeds NUM MiB. This works with -ffmpeg, but not with -vcd since VCDs have a standardized constant bitrate.

-parallel
    Perform ripping, encoding, and multiplexing processes in parallel using named pipes. Maximizes CPU utilization and minimizes disk usage. Note that this option simply does more tasks simultaneously, in order to make better use of available CPU cycles; it's unrelated to multi-CPU processing (which is done automatically anyway). Has no effect when -ffmpeg is used.

-update SECS
    Print status updates at intervals of SECS seconds. This affects how regularly the progress-meter is updated. The default is once every five seconds.

-mplayeropts "OPTIONS"
    Append OPTIONS to the mplayer command run during video encoding. Use this if you want to add specific video filters (documented in the mplayer manual page). Overriding some options will cause encoding to fail, so use this with caution!

-nofifo (EXPERIMENTAL)
    Do not use a FIFO pipe for video encoding. If you are getting "Broken pipe" errors with normal encoding, try this option. WARNING: This uses lots of disk space (about 2 GB per minute of video).

-keepfiles
    Keep the intermediate files after encoding. Usually, this means the audio and video streams are kept (eg the .ac3 and .m2v files for an NTSC DVD). This doesn't work with -parallel because the intermediate files are named pipes, and not real files.

-slice START-END
    Encode a segment from START to END (in seconds).

-from-gui
    Put tovid into a fully non-interactive state, suitable for calling from a gui.

-noask
    Don't ask questions when choices need to be made. Assume reasonable answers.

  Configuration

Two configuration files are created the first time you run tovid. Edit them to change tovid's directory use and default behavior.

Working and output directories are defined in ~/.tovid/preferences:
  WORKING_DIR=/tmp
  OUTPUT_DIR=/pub/video

If you would like to include certain command-line options all the time, edit ~/.tovid/tovid.config and add them.

  See also

idvid(1), makedvd(1), makemenu(1), makeslides(1), makevcd(1), makexml(1), postproc(1), tovid(1), todisc(1)

  Contact

For further assistance, contact information, forum and IRC links, please refer to the tovid homepage (http://tovid.org/).