Burn a playable DVD from a VIDEO_TS folder

6/14/2007 in Misc Notes by face | 18 comments


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.

  1. Chenks’s avatar

    Chenks on 8/6/2007 at 1:07 pm

    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 ?

  2. face’s avatar

    face on 8/6/2007 at 1:13 pm

    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

  3. Brian Maher’s avatar

    Brian Maher on 8/25/2007 at 9:15 pm

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

  4. Jon’s avatar

    Jon on 8/18/2008 at 10:59 pm

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

  5. face’s avatar

    face on 8/19/2008 at 12:19 pm

    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.

  6. tunnuz’s avatar

    tunnuz on 10/24/2008 at 4:29 am

    thank you, you solved me a problem

  7. Giorgio’s avatar

    Giorgio on 12/5/2008 at 7:11 am

    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.

  8. Giorgio’s avatar

    Giorgio on 12/5/2008 at 7:21 am

    Sorry, not true.
    You command is valid.
    The problem was the folder name.
    “DOCUMENTI” is not acceptable.
    “DOCS” is OK.
    Thanks again

  9. Hans’s avatar

    Hans on 1/11/2009 at 7:08 am

    Wonderful! Somebody should write a GUI for this :)

  10. kill8joy’s avatar

    kill8joy on 1/14/2009 at 2:55 pm

    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

  11. seth vail’s avatar

    seth vail on 1/21/2009 at 9:23 am

    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!

  12. omni’s avatar

    omni on 3/10/2009 at 2:41 am

    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

  13. Kurt Lloyd’s avatar

    Kurt Lloyd on 3/14/2009 at 5:49 pm

    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.

  14. Herman Van Hest’s avatar

    Herman Van Hest on 3/18/2009 at 6:25 pm

    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.

  15. MIHAI Popa’s avatar

    MIHAI Popa on 4/18/2009 at 8:16 pm

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

    Thank you for the tip.

  16. lmau’s avatar

    lmau on 5/23/2009 at 4:53 pm

    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??

  17. Ron’s avatar

    Ron on 6/8/2009 at 3:54 pm

    It works perfectly for me. Thanks for the tip!

  18. spud’s avatar

    spud on 6/11/2009 at 9:22 pm

    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.