Well. I guess I fail at fixing it
I was trying to burn off a DVD with some vids on it. Of course DVD’s are MPEG2 encoded to a VOB…no problem. I got this working. There’s nothing easier than converting to an MPEG2. Even VLC will do it through the Wizard!!!

The problem is burning the DVD. K3B will burn a video disc with VOB’s in the correct structure…but a DVD player won’t play it without the IFO files to say what is going to be played. So how do we create the IFO’s in Linux? Well I couldn’t figure that out.

I did find a bunch of tools that would do the IFO as part of the whole conversion process…which leads me to ask the question: Of how much use is an MPEG2 converter if you can’t use it on anything?

For one reason or another, all the DVD creation tools failed at creating the DVD disc structure (i.e. I was still left without an IFO file). I tried ManDVD, ToVid, and DeVeDe, as well as some command line tools. By the way ManDVD was really cool, nice, and slick. It felt like a commercial Windows app! Pity it didn’t work properly

I then retried with an SVCD since that’s MPEG2 also…and doesn’t need the IFO files. I though it would be easier. Well it was…but all those tools bailed because they don’t split the MPEG up…and then the tool fails because it will not create the BIN file because it’s too big.

So I found a front end to Transcode that will do it (Transcode rocks!). I find Transcode in itself kind of unwieldly (like I’m taking a Mach3 jet just to get to work a 10 min drive away heh). But that failed for some other reason even though it split the MPEG ok. Sigh. So much time wasted!!!

I’m going to just go and buy one of those slimline DVD/DivX players. Like AU$100 on eBay. Check it!