# DeVeDe, a video DVD creator

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## The main interface

After choosing the kind of disk you want, you will see the main interface:

##### Main interface for DVD discs

A DVD is divided in Titles and Files. Each title is a film on its own, and, when played, you have to choose the one you want to see. Into each title you can add as many files as you want, and cut them in chapters to allow an easy search. But remember that a DVD can contain up to 61 files, and a VideoCD, SuperVCD or CVD up to 99 files.

##### Main interface for VCD/SVCD/CVD discs

In VideoCDs, Super VideoCDs and CVDs there's no title concept, so that frame won't be visible when you choose to create one of them.

### Main window properties

In the DVD window screenshot we can see that there are two titles, and title two has two files. The files in a title will be played one after another, like a single film. So if you only want to create a DVD with one single film from multiple files, you have to put all of them in a single title. Your player will merge all in a single film.

The File info box contains all the information about the selected file: the final audio an video rate, original and final size, FPS and length in seconds. It has the estimated size in Mbytes, but have in mind that is an estimation, so the final size can be lower (but never higher).

The Disk usage bar shows the percentage of the disk currently used. You can occupy more than the 100% because it's based in an estimation, so the final size can (and probably will) be lower than the espected, but never higher (see the FAQ for details). You can choose the CD/DVD size too. Have in mind another thing: a 700MB CD can contain 80 minutes of compressed audio/video, which, at 1152 kbps are about 800MB. This means that, when the media is a CD, you MUST use the bar to know how many disc space you are using, and not the estimated size of the files, because you can put up to 800MB of compressed video in a 700MB CD, or about 720MB in a 650MB CD.

Under the bar is the Adjust disk usage button. Clicking on it will adjust the video rate in each video in order to use the 100% of the disk. To do so, DeVeDe takes in account the final resolution and the length, giving more bits per second to the videos with a higher resolution, but always in a proportional way. Remember that you should always click again the Adjust disk usage button after changing the final resolution, adding or removing subtitles, adding or removing titles, or, in general, before creating your disk, in order to assign a good video bit rate to each film. Remember that changing the soundtrack used in the menus will change the disk usage too.

The Default format sets the format used by default in your disk. It's used to create the menus and each time you add a video file. But, as we will see in a moment, you can use a different format in some videos if you want, having PAL and NTSC videos mixed in the same disk.

The Preview menu button allows you to see how will be the DVD menus. If you dislike it, you can change their properties (background picture, text colors, title...) with the Menu properties button. This will be explained with more detail in the section Creating the DVD menu. You can choose if you want or not a menu in your disk checking or unchecking the Create a menu with the titles checkbox.

Finally, there is an expander which hiddes the advanced options. If you expand it, you will see this:

##### Main interface for DVD discs with advanced options expanded.

Here, the Action block allows you to choose what do you want to create. The first option,Only convert film files to compliant MPEG files takes each file and converts it to a DVD-compliant MPEG-PS file, or to VCD, SVCD or CVD-compliant MPEG-PS. You can choose a generic name, being the default name "movie", so the files will have names like movie_XX_YY.mpg, being XX the title, and YY the file position into the title. An example: if you have two titles, and two files in the first title and three files at the second title, you will get five files: movie_01_01.mpg, movie_01_02.mpg, movie_02_01.mpg, movie_02_02.mpg and movie_02_03.mpg. This option is specially usefull when you want to create DVD menus with other program like DVD Styler, Q DVD Author or PoliDori. Of course, with VCD, SVCD or CVD, the title number will be always "01".

The second option, Create disk structure, is visible only when you create a DVD. It creates the MPEG files and then uses DVDAuthor to create the DVD tree structure. After that, it erases the MPEG files (unless you unckeck the Erase temporary files button). You can use this option to create the folder and files for a DVD and use your own DVD recording program to create the ISO image and burn it into a DVD.

The third option, (second if you are creating a VCD, SVCD or CVD), Create an ISO or BIN/CUE image, ready to burn to a disk, converts the files to MPEG, creates the DVD tree if needed and, using MKISOFS, creates the ISO file, erasing then the MPEG and DVD tree to free disk space. With CD media, it converts the files to MPEG and uses VCDImager to create a BIN/CUE image, ready to be burned to a CD. Use this option to create a disk image ready to be burned to a CD/DVD with a program like GnomeBaker or K3b, or directly from the Gnome Desktop.

These options will be unavailable when creating DIVX files, because there you will create only files, not disk images.

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