Technology never ceases to amaze me. When I was in college, my first computer had 4 MB of RAM, a 40 MB hard drive, a 13-inch monitor (that displayed 256 colors!), and had a processor that clocked in at 23 Mhz. It cost about five times as much as my current computer does.
And it isn’t just hardware, but the software. Back then, who would have guessed that people would someday take a video clip (maybe something they recorded on their DVR, something from a digital video camera, or something downloaded off the Internet), edit the video to how they want it, and make a DVD that could be viewed on a computer and a standalone DVD player? I sure wouldn’t have, and yet, because of programs like DeVeDe, not only is the process of taking many different videos and transcoding them into MPEG-2 files for DVD a painless one, DeVeDe actually makes the process intuitive!
DeVeDe, available exclusively for Linux, is able to perform several tasks, all with the same basic interface, and all with relatively little intrusion from the program. What can DeVeDe do? It is able to take a wide variety of video files (anything that can be played by MPlayer, a popular video player for Mac, Windows and Linux, can be used), and convert them to files suitable for a DVD, VCD (Video CD), SVCD (Super Video CD), or CVD (China Video Disc), as well as encode files to any number of size discs encoded with the Divx or MPEG-4 codecs.
To use DeVeDe, simply click, from the very basic main screen, which type of disk you’d like to create. The interface will remain consistent throughout, with the only differences being in the size of the finished product and the video resolution. Once you start a project, you’ll need to create titles and then add files to the title. A title can be comprised of a single video, or a string of clips you want to string together and view at once.
One thing to note right now is that DeVeDe is by no means a complete DVD creation suite, at least as far as store-purchased DVDs (with their bonus features, audio commentaries and featurettes), are concerned. What you will produce with DeVeDe, should you go this route, is a disc that will be playable in home DVD players, but will be without menus or buttons. It will start playing automatically when you insert it, and when the title is finished, it will likely revert back to your DVD player’s basic screen. Nothing more, nothing less.
Because of this, when I use DeVeDe, I never have it complete the process and convert my converted video files to a disc image. I choose to stop the process before that, so that the video files I’m left with are DVD-compliant files. This way, I can take them to a DVD creation program like QDVDAuthor or ManDVD, and add all the bonus features, menus, buttons and intro movies I want.
The speed of the conversion process depends on many things. What type of movie file are you converting? How large is it? How fast is your computer? Are you doing anything else with the computer that might take processing power away from DeVeDe? As an example, I started converting a 3-hour video file at the same moment I started typing up this review. The conversion process is currently sitting at 8 percent, and I’ve been typing for roughly twenty minutes. If my very rough guess is correct, that means I probably have another four hours or so before the transcoding is done… maybe more.
But once I’m finished, my video file will be ready to burn.
In addition to simple transcoding, DeVeDe has a few other features worth mentioning. First is that you’re not bound by the “standard” specs of a DVD, VCD, SVCD or CVD. If you attempt to transcode a few different video files, and are perturbed to find that those files will end up being larger than the disc can handle, you can tweak the file by lowering the audio and video bitrates. In many cases, depending on the quality of the initial file, you may not even notice.
But that’s not all DeVeDe can do. While you’re converting your video file (or files), you can also have DeVeDe add black bars to the top and bottom of your picture, as well as add subtitles to the video image. You can choose either PAL/SECAM format for the video, or NTSC. If your original file is interlaced, you can leave it that way, or get rid of it via three different types of blending or filters. What if, as can sometimes happen, the audio and video on your original file aren’t perfectly in sync? Well, DeVeDe can take care of that as well. And if you’re building a DVD image (or even just outputting standard MPEG-2 files), you can have DeVeDe insert chapters automatically, at regular intervals, for easier navigating (especially helpful when viewing a 3-hour football game!).
All in all I am a big fan of DeVeDe. It would be nice, I suppose, if it had a few niceties available, such as the ability to add a main menu, but that’s not completely necessary. And besides, the thinking of many programmers for Linux seems to be that a program should solve a single task, and do it well, instead of the “everything and the kitchen sink” approach favored by many commercial companies. Still, despite not having “every” feature I might want, the features DeVeDe does have are well thought-out, slickly implemented, and easy to understand.
