VCDMeta 0.20 review

VCDMeta is a Perl script which makes creating easy to navigate VCD extremely simple

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 112K Developer: Kevin Atkinson

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VCDMeta is a Perl script which makes creating easy to navigate VCD extremely simple. It takes in a simplified XML documents which simply contains a list of the Videos you want to include and how you want them to be arranged.

From that it will output a XML document suitable for use with vcdimager complete with easy to navigate menus. A text file "0VCDINDX.TXT" is also created which contains the complete contents of the CD for easy navigations when reading the VCD on a computer without VCD menu support.

If images are not provided for the menus it will create the menus for you. When the supplied patch is applied to VCDImager, VCDMeta can generate special easy to use mpeg files for use on a computer complete with an HTML index.

So far VCDMeta has only been testing on Linux but it should work on any Unix like operating system. It should also work on Windows provided the right Perl modules are installed with a little effort. I believe all the required libraries and tools have been ported to Windows, but I have not actually tested VCDMeta on Windows.

Requirements:
Perl
XML::Twig Perl module

For verifying the input XML file:

xmllint (Part of Libxml, should already be installed as it is also required for the XML front end of vcdimager)

For creating and converting images:

Image::Magick Perl module

For converting images into mpeg stills:

netpbm
mjpegtools


Installation

To install simply unpack the tarbar somewhere such as /usr/local:

cd /usr/local/
tar xfvz vcdmeta-X.tar.gz

where X is the version of the VCDMeta. If "tar xfvz" doesn't work try "gtar xfvz" or "gunzip -c vcdmeta-X.tar.gz | tar xfv -". This will create a directory ``vcdmeta-X''. If necessary edit the paths at the top of the VCDMeta script. Then add this directory to your path or create a symbolic link to VCDMeta in a directory already in your path. For example:

cd /usr/local/bin/
ln -s /usr/local/vcdmeta-X/vcdmeta

Do not just copy the VCDMeta script. If you do VCDMeta will not be able to find its data files.

That should be all thats required.

By default some free Type 1 fonts are used for menu creation. For nicer looking menus VCDMeta can use Windows (or any other) True Type fonts. See the top of VCDMeta for what to do to enable them.