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AVI files, DVD players, 0.99GB and Ubuntu
Written on February 5, 2010.

Most DVD players now-a-days support the AVI format. So it is highly convenient to watch downloaded content on the TV after burning it to a DVD±RW.
But while playing some downloaded content I observed a pattern. Files which are more than 1GB in size always had a problem with playback.
The playback would take time to start/stop/pause.
In-case i wanted to rewind or skip the file would screw up in that the audio/video lost synchronization.

This pissed me a lot until i thought about it. The answer was very simple. DVD players are made to read VOB files which have a maximum file size of 1GB (1024 x 1024 x 1024 = 1,073,741,824 bytes). The maximum size that I have seen on DVD is 0.99GB. Hence files with more than 1GB size always posed a playback problem.


The solution was to split the big file(s) into chunks of files with size less than 1GB.
This can be accomplished by using avisplit.

avisplit is provided by the transcode-util package.
Install the same using

sudo apt-get install transcode-util

This will install avisplit in your system.
Run avisplit at the prompt and you should get the following output

:~$ avisplit
avisplit (transcode v1.1.4) (C) 2001-2003 Thomas Oestreich, 2003-2009 Transcode Team
 
Usage: avisplit [options]
    -i name             file name
    -s size             de-chunk based on size in MB (0=dechunk)
    -H n                split only first n chunks [all]
    -t s1-s2[,s3-s4,..] de-chunk based on time/framecode (n:m:l.k) [off]
    -c                  merge chunks on-the-fly for option -t [off]
    -m                  force split at upper limit for option -t [off]
    -o base             split to base-%04d.avi [name-%04d]
    -b n                handle vbr audio [autodetect]
    -f FILE             read AVI comments from FILE [off]
    -v                  print version

The command that i use to split the big file is

avisplit -s 702 -i myBigVideo.avi

This will create a series of video in the same folder with the following names
myBigVideo.avi-000, myBigVideo.avi-001, myBigVideo.avi-002 and so on depending on the size of myBigVideo.avi.

And lastly a note :
In case you have got a AVI with AC3 5.1 sound, rest assured it is retained

Enjoy your DVD