Tovid changelog/upcoming

The following changes will be in the upcoming release of tovid, to be called version 0.30. If you want to take advantage of these features now (or help test them), you can download a quick release or install from SVN.

For current development goals, see the development plans.

GUIs

todiscgui

Screenshot of todiscgui using the default theme. See more screenshots.

New in 0.30

• New GUI for todisc using the Python built-in toolkit Tkinter
• Interface includes files, titles, disc format and TV system, showcase, menu title and backgrounds, thumbnail, font, and audio configuration, and nearly every other todisc option
• Use the command todiscgui to run the gui
• A todiscgui.desktop file is included and installed to allow running todiscgui from the menu
• Includes two graphical themes

tovidgui

In 0.30, tovidgui has many new menu options.

• More fonts now available in font-selection dialog
• Allowed adding of "Groups of Videos" to use makexml's -group ... -endgroup options.
• Full control over text fill and outline. New possibilies:
  • transparent fill
  • gradient fill
  • fractal fill
  • pattern fill
  • any color (including transparent) outline
  • adjustable outline width
• Full control over DVD button fill and outline. New possibilities:
  • separate button font from main text
  • special DVD button shapes (as seen here)
  • transparent fill
  • solid fill
  • transparent outline
  • solid outline
• New makemenu options supported:
  • -menu-title
  • -length
  • -fontsize
  • -align
• Add an "export to script" button in the encode pane to save the commands that will be run.
• Added checks before encoding for possible problematic situations.
• Added checks to ensure maximum of 36 buttons for a DVD menu (9 for (S)VCD)?)
• Minor logic fixes in the disc layout tree

Scripts

todisc

• Workaround for transcode stalling issues; if transcode appears to stall, send a HUP to try and recover
• -debug option removed
• added -text-menu option for todisc. Changed the makemenu option to -use-makemenu
• consolidated options: -showcase-video -showcase-image and -showcase-no-thumb are now : -showcase IMAGE|VIDEO (or just -showcase for no showcase thumb) and -bgvideo and -bgimage are now just -background IMAGE| VIDEO
• added -bgvideo-seek and -bgaudio-seek so all input material can be seeked in
• added -align which will align thumbs and titles north or south. (if -align north then title will align south)
• added -group to allow grouping videos in dvdauthor.xml. -group 1 2.mpg 3.mpg 4.mpg will group these 3 videos with the 1st video given with -files . . .
• allow showcase image/video or -background video for textmenu style
• improved quality of background video images by tweaking ffmpeg command
• offer to re-encode non-compliant -group'ed files as well
• added -highlight-colour and -select-colour for changing menu button colours ("color" spelling allowed)
• -textmenu takes an argument: the number of titles in column 1
• use multiline titles from main menu for submenu (if -submenu-titles not given)
• added -intro VIDEO option for adding a vmgm intro movie that plays before the root menu
• added -outlinewidth for spumux outlinewidth variable
• added -text-start for -text-menu menus. The titles will start at the given pixel on the Y axis.
• added -title-gap for -text-menu menus. The given value is the distance between titles vertically ( Y axis ).
• added -rotate-thumbs for rotating the thumbnail images. The given values are the rotate degrees, and there must be one value for each file given with -files.
• many other bug fixes and tweaks and no doubt some new bugs too !

tovid

• Some ffmpeg-based encoding issues resolved
• New -slice option, for encoding only a given segment of a video
• New -async option
• Prompt user on whether to remove intermediate files (.m2v, .ac3 etc.); can be overridden with -noask

makemenu

• Fixed button layout bug for DVD menus: buttons appear where you would expect them.
• New options:
  • -length -- for setting the length of menus (ie if you don't want a whole song, you can trim it)
  • -align middle -- for putting the entries right in the center of the frame (was overridden by -align center).
  • -noask -- for when you don't want an interactive makemenu (gui comes to mind...)
  • -quiet -- for reduced scrolling :)
  • for menu titles -- see an example
    • -menu-title -- for adding a main title to your menu
    • -menu-title-fontsize -- for setting the font size of the main title
  • for DVD buttons -- see examples
    • -button-font -- for changing the font of the buttons. (Webdings has some good symbols, but you don't want your text to be unreadable.)
    • -button-outline -- for outlining the buttons, giving a nice two-color effect.
    • -button play|movie|utf8 -- a few short cuts for using specific button shapes.

idvid

• New -tabular option for summarizing/comparing specs from several videos
• Using ffmpeg's reported bitrate, which seems to be more accurate than mplayer's
• Patch for multi-res files (from Nick Matteo).

makevcd

• Actually works now ;0)
• -quiet -- for reduced scrolling :)

makedvd

• -quiet -- for reduced scrolling :)
• Quits on vfat filesystems, since filename case is ignored and 'video_ts' isn't DVD compatible.

makexml

• Default DVD chapter creation corrected: video length was measured, but no chapters were made; now 5-minute chapters are made by default
• Console output cleanup
• -quiet -- for reduced scrolling :)

pymakexml

• Now works for (S)VCD and DVD
• Supports arbitrary chapter lists via the -chapters option

tovid-init

• Dependency-check for normalize-audio (Debian-specific package name of normalize)
• Simpler, more intuitive dependency checking. It's safe to delete $HOME/.tovid/dependency.list - the file is no longer used.
• Quit when more than one tovid is found on the system, preventing unpredictable behavior.
• New function get_filesystem $DIRECTORY to find what filesystem $DIRECTORY is on.

libtovid

The development goals for the 0.30 libtovid sadly went unmet, but fortunately things are starting to show signs of stability. Several things were refactored, merged, or outright removed for simplicity's sake. Here are a few of the highlights:

• dvdauthor and vcdimager XML-generation capability is now neatly encapsulated by author.py, building on a generic XML backend in xml.py. This is the backend used by pymakexml (see above).
• spumux subtitle-multiplexing is now contained in spumux.py, again building on the XML backend.
• The render/drawing.py vector graphics backend was overhauled to allow rendering to arbitrary resolutions
• render/layer.py was revised to work with new rendering backend.
• cli.py now supports command-line execution and pipes via Command and Pipe classes. Stream redirection and capturing is handled properly.
• output.py makes colored console output easy.