SmallDVD: Release Notes

v2.0 beta 1

  • added control over the conversion bitrate for non-MPEG2 input files
  • overhauled user interface, which merges the video file selection and template editor windows
  • Known problems:Currently, only three conversion rates are available, “Good”, “Better” and “Best”. In the future I will add more, and allow custom settings. “Good” and “Better” fit about 130 minutes onto a 4.3Gb DVD, “Best” fits about 95 minutes. “Good” is does a single pass conversion, “Better” and “Best” do two-pass conversion which is slower, but higher quality.
  • When selecting “New” or “Load” from the file menu, there’s an error displayed. You can just ignore this, it doesn’t do any harm.

v1.0

  • doubled the size of the preview window
  • fixed the “can’t get word 2″ error when trying to add invalid video files

v0.8

  • changed the remultiplexing utility to use ffmpeg. This also enables the input video to be converted to an appropriate format if necessary. See file formats for more details.
  • changed the batch processor to use Growl notifications to deliver status messages. If Growl is installed, it will display a notification for the start and finish of each DVD being created. If you haven’t got Growl installed, you won’t see any messages.
  • major code restructure, which you can’t see, but was definitely necessary!

v0.7

  • adds support for NTSC menus (previously they were all forced to be PAL)
  • adds ability to load and save DVD definitions (via the file menu)
  • adds ability to save default template settings (via the file menu)
  • includes simple batch processor for creating multiple DVD images in one go (see Using the batch processor for more details)
  • fix for bug which caused wrong fonts to be used in menus

v0.6

  • Fixed problem where menus buttons were positioned wrongly when using a 16:9 menu on a DVD player configured 4:3 mode.
  • Upgraded to dvdauthor 0.6.12alpha (to enable the button positioning fix

v0.5

  • Added simple point-and-click interface for positioning menu buttons. See Using the template editor for more details
  • Added default menu background
  • Fixed bug which prevented DVD creation working with terminal output for users who didn’t have bash as their primary shell
  • Exiting SmallDVD now also exits iMagine Photo
  • more documentation, including using the template editor, and converting files from other formats for use in SmallDVD

v0.4

  • Added ability to set chapter lengths to the template editor
  • Can now remove video files from the list
  • DVDs now return to menu after playing each video (might allow this to configurable in the template in a later version)
  • Aspect ratio of preview menu now changes when set in the template editor

v0.3

  • Changed the way temporary files are stored to hopefully make it more resilient to unexpected missing folders
  • Added ability to change aspect ratio from 16:9 to 4:3 (set in the template)

v0.2

  • Fixed a bug that caused the temporary items folder not to be created at startup

v0.1

  • initial release

Included in the package:

  • dvdauthor & spumux (from dvdauthor)
  • mpeg2enc, mplex & png2yuv (from mjpegtools)
  • mkisofs (from cdrtools)
  • bbdmux (from bbMPEG)
  • ffmpeg (from v0.8)

 

Native Intel and PPC versions of each of these are included (which is why there are different packages for each platform)