Current version: 3.5
By default, Mencoder uses fast options, but DeVeDe uses high quality options. If you want speed, just go to the tab Quality options (in the Advanced options section) and there disable Trellis and choose Use MBCMP. Now DeVeDe should be as fast as Mencoder with default options.
VFAT and FAT32 file systems doesn't understand uppercase/lowercase letters, and shows everything in lowercase. Unfortunately, the creation of a DVD tree is case sensitive.
First you need python 2.5. Then you have to make sure you have gtk for windows installed. It is more easy to get the Gtk+/Win32 Development Environment (runtime, devel, docs, glade) version. Then you need pygtk. Now you need to install python 2.5 extension pywin32. Any of the needed programs such as mplayer that are not already installed should now be automatically installed next time you run mplayer. Or you can wait for a win32 installer to be made (any voluteers in the room?).
That's the current limit for DeVeDe, to allow to use one single menu. With more titles there should be need more than one page for the menus. But if people really, really need it, I'll implement it.
Unfortunately is impossible to accurately predict the disk's final size, because you specify a bitrate, but Mencoder can decide to use an smaller value in certain parts if it can compress it more without quality loss (like in very static scenes). That means that the final size can be smaller than the estimation made by DeVeDe, but never bigger.
Don't worry, it's a bug of MPlayer when showing DVD subtitles from a file instead of a true DVD. In the final disk they will look fine.
Some Mplayer/Mencoder versions seems to fail to show the subtitles when you watch an MPEG file from hard disk, but they are there. SVN versions seems to have this fixed.
Just choose a TrueType font you like and copy it in $HOME/.spumux directory, renaming it to devedesans.ttf.
DivX format doesn't allow embedded subtitles, but nearly all software players (MPlayer, VLC...) and a lot of hardware players can render them on-demand if you put the file with the subtitles in the same directory than the movie, and rename the former with the same name than the later (this is, if your movie file is MYMOVIE.AVI and your subtitles are in .SRT format, just put the subtitles file in the same directory and rename it to MYMOVIE.SRT). The player should allow you to enable/disable them with the same button used for DVD subtitles.
Be sure that you have checked the option Add a menu with the titles.
Currently you can't with DeVeDe.
Probably not. My intention is to maintain DeVeDe as an easy-to-use tool. If you want to create complex menues you have excellent tools like DVD Styler, Q DVD Author or PoliDori.
There's a bug in GTK 2.12.0 (the one used in Ubuntu 7.10) that produces that behaviour. I already reported it, but developers need time to fix it. Until then, there's only one workaround: pressing cancel and clicking again the Properties button, until the filename appears in the filebutton. The same if you use Drag&Drop.
Due to limitations in the DVD standard, DeVeDe can't allow to use different aspect ratios in the same disk. I hope to fix this in a future version of DeVeDe.
Version 1.0-rc1 of MPlayer/Mencoder (the one released, at least at April 20, 2007 with Ubuntu Feisty and other Linux distributions) is buggy and doesn't work fine. While they don't launch a fixed release, just download the file mplayer_fixed from DeVeDe's homepage and follow the instructions there. Or, if you are brave and experimented, you can compile MPlayer/Mencoder from SVN.
Update (21 Nov. 2007): Mplayer/Mencoder 1.0 RC2 is out and fixes this bug. You can find .deb packages in the GUTSY-BACKPORTS repository.
Go to Advanced options->Misc, and mark the option Use a GOP of 12 frames.
If your source video file has AC3 audio, use the This file already has AC3 sound instead.
Be sure that you are using the last version of MPlayer/Mencoder (at least 1.0Pre8, but later is better). The very common version 1.0Pre7 has some bugs that can lead to problems with DeVeDe. But warning with version 1.0-rc1.
Be sure that your MPlayer/Mencoder version is compiled with MP3lame support. The creation of DIVX files needs it.
Open a terminal and launch DeVeDe with this command:
When it fails (or when it fully ends), take the files OUTPUT.TXT and XXXXXX.XML (you will find the later in the destination directory), and send both to raster@rastersoft.com.