There are many great disc burning apps for Ubuntu, but (just like in Windows) you may find not every one does everything you need. In Windows, you may have found a lack of support for burning ISO images (in Ubuntu, you just right-click and choose “Burn to disc“), but in Ubuntu and its siblings the feature nearly every one of them is missing is the ability to burn a VIDEO_TS folder to a playable disc.
With some, there just is no option for a proper movie DVD, and don’t be too surprised if those that do give you one playable on your computer, but not in the DVD player in the lounge. That’s where K3b comes in.
When you click the More actions… button, choose “New Video DVD Project” from the menu that appears.
You can then just drag and drop the VIDEO_TS folder into the blank project (or browse via the pane above).
You can then double-click the label (“K3b data project“) and enter your own disc label (the old name will be selected so just type away).
When you’re ready to proceed with the burning, insert a blank DVD and click the Burn button. When the dialogue appears, you may want to uncheck the default option of “Verify written data” before proceeding, as when the disc is burned the process will only be 50% through, since it will then scan the disc to verify the data. You may also want to check that “Simulate” is not enabled too, as that will force it to do a test-run before actually burning. Note that any changes you make will become the default, so you won’t have to manually do so again.
You can also choose how many copies you want, lower the burning speed if you’re spitting out coasters, and “Only create image” to “burn” the movie project to an ISO image for burning later. Once you’re ready to burn your DVD, click the Burn button.
You can view the progress via the “Writing Video DVD” dialogue, or just look to the progress bar at the top of your screen.
That’s it! Your movie disc will be watchable in any DVD player.
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Alternatively, and more simply, we can use the command line:
:~$ growisofs -speed=2 -dvd-compat -Z /dev/cdrom -dvd-video -V “DVD_LABEL” /path/to/the/VIDEO_TS/directory
-speed=2 limits the speed to insure a successful burn and playing in set-top dvd players.
/dev/cdrom – location of your cd/dvd burning device. change accordingly
“DVD_LABEL” – label the dvd to be burned with whatever label you choose
/path/to/the/VIDEO_TS/directory – change accordingly. example: /mnt/movies/Avatar (provide the path to the parent directory of the VIDEO_TS folder)
Thanks… but, um, “more simply” seems a tad subjective, hehe, as I think most people would be more comfortable with an easy 4-step GUI process:
1) Click K3b launcher to open in
2) Choose the video DVD option
3) Drag the VIDEO_TS folder to it
4) Click the Burn button.
But thanks anyway, as it is always good to know other options, including command-line ones (I was actually saving that for its own post, since this article is part of my K3b series).
I would much prefer adding that line into a script that being forced to install k3b and a bucket load of dependencies.
# growisofs -speed=4 -dvd-compat -Z /dev/sr0 -dvd-video -V $1 $1
1 script, 1 step. Copy & Paste. Simple.
Yeah, sure, as I use commands/scripts for many tasks like that too, but this article is for those who prefer a GUI-based approach, and one where they wouldn’t need to alter a command to include the correct path to the VIDEO_TS folder, nor worry about scripts and know how to run them on the folder in question. Besides, K3b is a great program and worth installing, especially for newbies. Also, with changes to Ubuntu that can suddenly render commands I’ve got useless (like erasing a disc, for example) because the device path is now wrong (as has happened in the last couple of versions), when I haven’t got time to nut it out, I can just open K3b and do it that way (it can always find the drive). I plan to do more articles on CLI approaches in the future. Thanks for your input.
A shot in the dark here as this is 4 years after the OP but I’ve gotten to the last bit here, what is a parent directory and how do I find out what that is for _my_ VIDEO_TS folder?
I tried to google it but I dont’ know what the proper key words are for me to find that out
Not sure where you got the words “parent directory”, as I actually don’t use that term in my article (but one of the reader comments does), but all that means is the folder (“directory”) that another one resides in. Like your “home” folder, which is actually /home/yourusername, means “yourusername” is a sub-folder of “home” – its parent – and likewise “home” is a sub-folder of it’s parent “/” (the “root” of the drive). So the parent folder of “VIDEO_TS” is simply the disc. When you click on the disc in the left pane of your file manager, and end up at the root of the drive and looking at the contents (usually being just that one child or sub-folder, VIDEO_TS), you are in fact looking at the parent directory of whatever is inside it. If you want to know the actual “path” (address), select your disc drive in the file manager so it is looking in it, then hit Ctrl+L so the “breadcrumb” buttons in the location bar near the top are replaced by a text-entry “address bar” with the address in text, which will reveal the actual path (https://ubuntugenius.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/how-to-show-text-entry-address-bar-or-breadcrumbs-navigation-buttons-in-nautilus-after-ubuntu-10-04-upgrade/). In the case of something like your Downloads folder, it will show exactly the same as the breadcrumbs, but with a CD/DVD or attached USB drive (or other partition on your main drive), it will show something quite different, being the actual address, not the user-friendly version the breadcrumbs display. I gather you need that for using with a command, and if that is the case and the path has spaces in it, remember to enclose that address in double-quotes, otherwise the command will fail (for example, /media/yourusername/DVD_Video won’t need quotes, as there is no blank space anywhere, but “/media/yourusername/Ubuntu 13.10 Live DVD” will).
Hello,
I have succesfully burnt an empty audio_ts and filled video_ts folder to a K3b Data DVD on Ubuntu 10.10
It is playing perfectly on a external video dvd player connected to a TV, and it also plays on a Windows machine.
But in Ubuntu 10.10 the burnt DVD is not recognised and my DVD drive will not mount the disc at all.
Is this problem resolved when I use a Video DVD project in K3b? Or there something else what I have to do to resolve this.
Kind Regards,
OK, first off, you mention 10.10 twice, so I gather you mean you burned it in a previous version, like 9.10. Now, if you’re serious that after burning a data DVD with K3b you got it to play as a normal movie disc, in Ubuntu, Windows, and even your external player, then I can’t even tell you how you did it, as I’ve never had such luck. I’ve only ever come across one (Windows) program that could do that – every other one I’ve tried results in unplayable discs (unless you manually load the VIDEO_TS folder, which probably even Windows Media Player can handle). External players are usually very fussy, but some of them these days can play anything on any type of disc, so you might have one of those (but that wouldn’t explain the offending discs playing unassisted in Windows and previous Ubuntu).
Now, I have no idea why it isn’t even mounting in Ubuntu, or whether you can see the unmounted disc in the left pane of Nautilus, but you can try:
sudo mount /dev/sr0 /media/cdrom0
(assuming /dev/sr0 is your drive, and the mount-point folder /media/cdrom0 [or whatever you want to use] exists on your system).
You could then drag the VIDEO_TS folder to a new video DVD project in K3b, and get a disc that can play anywhere. If the mount command doesn’t work (and you tried specifying /dev/scd0 instead, just in case), try wodim
--devices (without a disc in the drive) to make sure your drive doesn’t have another path (but it should return /dev/scd0, which coexists with /dev/sr0). You can also see what the command mount (by itself) displays about the drive, if anything. Also, you can try a sequence of unmount and mount that has apparently worked for some with problem discs (once again, change paths if need be):sudo umount /media/cdrom0/
sudo mount /dev/sr0 /media/cdrom0/
If you can’t mount the disc at all, then if you can still access it in Windows, boot into that, drag the VIDEO_TS folder to your hard drive, then when in Ubuntu use that in K3b. I would definitely refrain from creating data DVDs meant for viewing from now on, especially since K3b has the option to burn perfectly playable movie discs. Hope something there helped you! Cheers.
PS: the wodim command listed should have 2 hyphens before devices, not one long one. Stupid WordPress autoformatting. (Edit: just fixed it with code, but it looks odd, and as if there is a space between the double hyphens and the word devices, which there isn’t)
2 and a half years later this is still helpful info. Trying it out now. Thanks for posting the tutorial!
And even today (another 6 months later) it is valuable
Hello, I followed your comments and it worked just fine up to the burn point.
When I pressed the burn button, I received a message that all of the dvd files were not present and could not do the burn also, it said that only mpeg 1 and mpeg 2 were acceptable. My video are all mpeg 4.
I use handbrake to copy the videos but I guess it leaves out the dvd data.
Is there a way to get my videos from the mpeg 4 to and mpeg 1 or 2 so I can use k3b? Or do I have to use K3b to copy the video in the first place?
If you can help with this I would be grateful.
Thank you.
Firstly, is this a /VIDEO_TS folder you’re trying to burn? If so, it should already be totally compliant (note this tutorial is only for burning such a folder, which is what you’d find on a DVD). If you’re actually trying to burn a video file, like an .mp4, you should try DeVeDe.
Thanks for this writeup. I moved from Ubunto to Centos and only K3b was readily available. Being new to K3b, I had a VIDEO_TS & AUDIO_TS folder that I first burned as a DATA DVD, which, of course, failed when placed into a hardware DVD player. Then I found this article – and I’m glad you wrote it up. (Note: To the guy with the command line … that’s not “simpler”; it’s different, it’s Linux, but it’s not simpler.)
Spot on with this write-up, I seriously believe thiss amazing site
needs a great deal more attention. I’ll probably be baack again to read
through more, thanks for the info!