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Burn a playable DVD from a VIDEO_TS folder


macosxhints.com – Burn a playable DVD from a VIDEO_TS folder

After searching the forums and trying various things, I still couldn’t find a quick, reliable, free method of burning a VIDEO_TS folder to a pure UDF DVD, so that it would play in regular DVD players, as well trigger DVD Player to start up automatically. Anyway, as often is the case, Terminal had the answers. Just type in this command and change the paths to suit:

hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name DVD_NAME -o MY_DVD.iso /path/to/VIDEO_TS/parent/folder

Make sure that /path/to/VIDEO_TS/parent/folder is the path to the folder containing the VIDEO_TS folder, not the VIDEO_TS folder itself. Once the .iso file has been created, drag this to Disk Utility and hit the Burn button.

37 replies on “Burn a playable DVD from a VIDEO_TS folder”

i can’t get this to work. i have the paths set correctly to my VIDEO_TS folder.

is the command supposed to be on 2 lines ?

It is all on one line – the is the classic Unix line continuation character – a followed by a newline is treated like a space.

Put the command on one line

By Post Author

This created a DVD that plays fine on my Mac, but my DVD player says the disc is not recognized.

I know this is a stupid question, but do I use my Mac’s home volume name in that line?

It’s not a stupid question. It is incomplete and not coherent.
What is the “Mac’s home volume name”?
Where would you want that placed in the command line.
etc.

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Really util information!
Many thanks for that.
I do need to include a DOCS folder into the DVD.
The methode you expose does put on DVD only VIDEO and AUDIO TS folders.
Any solution?
Thanks in advance.

I was confused about the Terminal command as well but finally figured it out.

The file I wanted to burn was called “ACN” So where you see ACN below, replace that with your own name.

then you see, “/Users/admin/Desktop” – that’s the path to the VIDEO_TS folder which I got by right-clicking on the VIDEO_TS folder and click “Get Info”. The path is under the “General” drop-down menu.

Hope that helps.

hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name ACN -o ACN.iso /Users/admin/Desktop

hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name DVD_NAME -o MY_DVD.iso /path/to/VIDEO_TS/parent/folder

i was looking in the hdiutil man page and it had this listed i believe as a guide

hdiutil makehybrid -o

i am not sure i understand the and part and also in the command at the top i dont understand what i should enter for DVD_NAME and MY_DVD.iso (i think the two misunderstandings are related but i could be wrong and would like to know whether or not am)

if i had a dvd folder with the proper name HAVING_FUN and a video_ts folder and audio folder in it; would my command look like this ?

hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name HAVING_FUN -o HAVING_FUN.iso /Desktop/HAVING_FUN (assuming the folder is in fact on the desktop)

and if that is correct can someone still explain the thing to me? thanx!

hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name AEON_FLUX_DISC_1 -o AEON_FLUX_DISC_1.iso /Users/omnicron1/Downloads/Aeon Flux/AEON FLUX DISC 1

I too am happy to have this solution to at least end up with a burned DVD-R that can play on computers, though this same burned DVD-R is not recongnized by either of our two not-too-old DVD players.

I’ ve tried this, and everything works, i get the iso file..
When i hit the burn button it says “NOT RECOGNISED”
Any thoughts, input?

Grtz.

Avoid spaces in the path name, i.e. have “my_folder” instead of “my folder”.

Thank you for the tip.

i’ve tried this but i don’t think it works tough, because in the end it’s says that the .iso file already exists, but i don’t see any file…
any suggestions??

One reason a retail DVD player might not read the disk is because the “booktype” is not set to DVD-ROM when you burned the disk. On DVD+R and DVD+RW disks you can burn this field that tells the DVD player what kind of disk it is. If you lie in this field and set it to type DVD-ROM (instead of DVD+RW or whatever it is) there is a higher chance the retail DVD player will play it.

I am new to all this and did not realize at first that you need the VIDEO_TS file in a folder all by itself. As the original post stated, your command line should not include the text VIDEO_TS, just the path to the folder that contains only that file. After the .iso file was created, it showed up automatically when I opened Disk Utility, and all I had to do was select it and click Burn.

Hi all,

I just bought a mac after using 20 years microsoft. So maybe somebody can give me an example of this command:???

hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name DVD_NAME -o MY_DVD.iso /path/to/VIDEO_TS/parent/folder

path?
to?

Usually something like

/Volumes/NAMEOFDVD/VIDEO_TS/

it all depends on the name of the disk you insert, or where you copy the VIDEO_TS folder to

8)

By Post Author

An example could be:

hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name FLOWERS -o flowers.iso /Users/ramon/Downloads/flowers

Getting a weird error. Can anyone explain this?

hdiutil: makehybrid: multiple sources specified
hdiutil: makehybrid failed – Invalid argument

This is what my terminal cmd looks like

hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name bolt -o bolt.iso /volumes/DY EXTERNAL/movies/Bolt/

If “path to volume name” contains spaces or special characters you need to protect them in the shell.

/volumes/DY EXTERNAL/movies/Bolt/

is two tokens separated by a space

/volumes/DY EXTERNAL/movies/Bolt/

or

“/volumes/DY EXTERNAL/movies/Bolt/”

should solve the problem on the command line.

8)

By Post Author

I’m gettin a similar problem as: lmau on 5/23/2009 at 4:53 pm
I enter the code in terminal and it says the .iso file already exists, but I do not see the file anywhere, anybody got a solution?

skip this mess do it with Disk Utility.app

To do it with Disk Utility, create a folder with the name you want your disk to have. Copy the VIDEO_TS directory to that folder. In Disk Utility, select “File > New Image From Folder…”. Select the folder you just put the VIDEO_TS directory in. Select “DVD/CD Master” from the “Image Format” drop-down and click the Save button.

I gave a try to Tan’s advise to use the Disk Utility but after burning the dvd wasn’t recognized by my dvd player or my mac. I tried to burn using a folder with a name i put (puting the al of the file inside the folder named “VIDEO_TS”)
and didn’t work. And I tried it also making a master dvd from a folder in which i put the whole “VIDEO_TS” folder I downloaded and again, the player couldn’t recognize the disk.
Any ideas of what could have happened?

The reason a DVD player is unable to recognise the disk is that it requires the files in the VIDEO_TS to be physically in the correct order, in particular the VIDEO_TS.IFO file should come first. When you insert a disk into a DVD player it scans the first few sectors looking for this file which contains a list of sector offsets to find the title sets on the DVD. If the DVD player can’t find the IFO file or finds another file first it generally gives up.

Unfortunately, alphabetically the file “VIDEO_TS.BUP” comes first and it appears that the mac writes this file first when burning a plain data disk. A computer DVD player, on the other hand, understands the file system on?the disk and can therefore find any file it wants with out having to?know the offset values. That’s why the mac can play the disk OK, but not a DVD player.

It is also important that the VOB files are in the correct?order as a DVD player just plays the data it finds, ignoring file boundaries,?until it reaches the end. In fact a DVD player doesn’t even understand files?and only uses sector offsets to find data.

HEREÂ’S AN EXAMPLE OF A CORRECT VIDEO_TS FOLDER:

VIDEO_TS.IFO ?
VIDEO_TS.VOB ?
VIDEO_TS.BUP ?
VTS_01_0.IFO ?
VTS_01_0.VOB ?
VTS_01_1.VOB ?
VTS_01_2.VOB ?
VTS_01_0.BUP ?
VTS_02_0.IFO ?
VTS_02_0.VOB ?
VTS_02_1.VOB ?
VTS_02_0.BUP

So the problem is to structure the files in the required order on the written disk, and not just alphabetically. I’ve experimented with various disc images & software tools (e.g Burn), with no success. How do you burn a disk with files in a certain order?

Any suggestions?

Re: dewshi (5:12am)

>So the problem is to structure the files in the required order on the written >disk, and not just alphabetically. IÂ’ve experimented with various disc images >& software tools (e.g Burn), with no success. How do you burn a disk with >files in a certain order?

Er… rename the files so that their alphabetical order matches the required one?

If your explanation is correct (and it sounds like you know what you’re talking about) this should produce an image that will be understood by a “dumb” DVD player. However, it may not be understood by a “smart-alec” computer DVD drive, since then the filenames will no longer match what t expects.

Okay, for some reason I end up with an ISO file larger than the disc I started with. My ISO is 9 Gb… how do I burn that to a DL disc with a cap of around 8.5???

There is a program for OS X 10.5, 10.6 that will do this for you. It is called AquaISO and it’s available on Sourceforge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/aquaiso/ . It uses the hdiutil command and allows you to select exactly what files you want and where to save it, as well as the name of the ISO. You can also alter the options using convenient checkboxes.

I, too, have been searching for a way to burn my VIDEO_TS folder, for free. I found DVD Imager (http://lonestar.utsa.edu/llee/applescript/dvdimager.html …look for the download link and description about 60% down the page) was very simple and worked perfectly to create a disk image, then I simply burned the image using the mac’s built-in Disk Utility.

The command created the iso file for me, but somehow it was not saved to the folder where the Video_TS folder was in. It was instead saved to /users/username main folder. I was confused at first, but found the image file after a search in finder.

The ‘-o’ specifies where the iso file goes. If you don’t give it a path it defaults to your current directory. When using command line tools it is better to be specific about locations rather than assume that they default to someplace like the location of the source.

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just found at internet:
rename the parent folder from “my_folder” to “my_folder”.dvdmedia
then you can play dvd right out from there, plus you can burn it to a disk simply selecting the option at “finder”.

This worked perfectly on 10.6.7.

Hint: for ease of writing the source path, put your source (the folder containing your VIDEO_TS folder) in the main directory of your boot drive (Macintosh HD, usually.) Then the path to the parent folder is

//foldername

I did not specify a path to the finished .iso file, so it ended up in the main directory of my username (users/username).

Thanks for the help!