Ok the holidays are just around the corner, and for me that means going to a in-laws house. The problem I have is that I would love to show a clip off youtube or some video file I have, or even entertain my nieces and nephews with some interesting web shows. But how can you? Hooking up your laptop to there “Very expensive HDTV” is not an option.
What you would need is a DVD with all the stuff from the Internet... but how? And using Linux? First you need the raw video from the net, this can easly be grabbed buy the Firefox plug-in “VideoDownloadHelper” => http://www.downloadhelper.net/Which will allow you to save video in Flash format or flv. Once the plugin is installed, add it's icon to a visible tool bar. You must start playing the video you want to capture, you can pause it after any pre-roll ads. The video download helper icon will then be available with a pull down. You should only save the last video in the list or the video with the correct name. I recommend trying it a few times it does take some practice to NOT download Ads or junk ( when you think you got the video you want ). Then you need to create the DVD, which can also be easily done with a program called “DVD Styler” (http://www.dvdstyler.de/) This is one slick program. It's basically a WYSISYG DVD menu editor with some menu templates. What makes this application stand out is that you can add the above said flv or any video format that ffmpeg can handle ( note under Linux I have tested this and it works,on other platforms your on your own ). So you just add the video and create a simple menu system for the DVD. The other nice thing that I found was that you can chose your output method, you could burn the DVD direct or create a master “iso” file so you could burn copies later on. Last note is that video transcending to the DVD format may take a few hours, so best set this up and let it run overnight. Note: you don't have to just make DVD's of YouTube content, DVD Styler can work with any video format that ffmpeg can, so you can make DVD's of that home video or other projects! Yes I know there are tools to do this on other platforms, but they cost $$$ and are unreliable at best. I found with these two tools you can create portable content that plays on a common DVD player. Well hope this helps people out for the holiday season! GNu Joe
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