How to convert an MP4 to a DVD and burn it on Linux

James Young · August 27, 2016

If you’re using Vagrant with VirtualBox on Windows, create a new directory, throw the source mp4 in it, then create a Vagrantfile like this;

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "bento/ubuntu-16.04"

  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
  vb.customize ["storageattach", :id, "--storagectl", "IDE Controller", "--port", 0, "--device", 0, "--type", "dvddrive", "--passthrough", "on", "--medium", "host:X:"]
  end
end

Edit the host:X: to be the drive letter of your physical DVD drive.

Then bring up the VM with;

vagrant up
vagrant ssh
sudo -s -H

Now that’s done, do this.  You can start from here if you’re already on Linux or have some other means of getting a VM ready.  I assume you’re going to want to make a PAL DVD, and that your DVD is in /dev/sg0 (check with wodim --devices);

apt-get install dvdauthor mkisofs ffmpeg wodim
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -target pal-dvd video.mpg
export VIDEO_FORMAT=PAL
dvdauthor -o dvd/ -t video.mpg
dvdauthor -o dvd/ -T
mkisofs -dvd-video -o dvd.iso dvd/
wodim -v dev=/dev/sg0 speed=8 -eject dvd.iso

All done.  Assuming everything went well, you have a freshly burned DVD, all using open source Linux software, with no horrible adware that tends to come with Windows DVD burning software.

You can then get rid of the VM with vagrant destroy.

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