fotocd

german version of this pageNews

Technic is changing. Nobody needs today CD’s to bring photos on a TV. Streaming, harddiscs, USB-sticks, etc. do this easier. Therefore development of fotocd has gone asleep. Nevertheless you can get it here and I will help as good as I can if you run in problems.

Recent version:

Stable release:
fotocd version 1.0.6
Unstable release:
fotocd version 1.1.13
Changes: NEWS

The project is hostet on sourceforge.net.

Archiv

Creating a Photo-CD

How can you get photos on a CD with linux and play this CD with a standalone DVD-Player on the television? And how can you mix the photos with films and interesting documents?

On a linux-machine you can find all you need for this task, you can get proper programs in the internet and go on. The problem is, that all the steps to get many pictures on a CD are an horrible work.

So, why not write a script to do all the stuff? A simple script is quick written, but if you want a good structure and a well navigation, it will be complicated.

But, don’t worry! On this side I have a solution for you. fotocd.sh is a bash-script, that will do all that work for you.

You can create a Photo-CD on a linux-machine with many Photo-Albums. Each album can contain many sections. You can sort your photos in directorys and then the names of the directorys will be used as titles of the albums and sections. Sections will be sorted alphanumeric. So if you want another order, you can start each name of a section with a number and a underscore „_“. The sections will be sorted according to this numbers, but you won’t find the numbers on the CD.

You can use the following file formats:

Pictures:

  • JPG bzw. JPEG
  • PNG
  • TIF

Films:

  • MPG (VCD or SVCD)

Documents:

  • PDF
  • HTM eg. HTML
  • EPS
  • SX? (OpenOffice.org-files)

The CD ist a normal (S)VCD and you can have a PC-part on it. All pictures can be archieved orignally and you can browse them with a normal webbrowser. Additional you can place some other documents in the PC-part. At this time the formats PDF, HTML, EPS and SX? (OpenOffice.org) will work. So you can use the photo-CD as an archiv for your pictures or you can use it as documentation of an event. It is possible to build the photo-CD without the PC-part if you have problems to place all your pictures on the CD (the VCD-format restricts some times more than the free space on the CD).

You can adjust the script to your need in a configurationsfile, which will be build in the homedirectory on the first run (.fotocdrc). You start the script with the names of the albums you as parameters. Also you can erase a CDR/W during the script-run (it can last some time…) and burn the photo-CD at the end.

Limitation

Only PAL is supported by fotocd.sh.

Hints

Please read the hints in the file README (at the moment very short, so maybe the german version LIESMICH will help you) and if you update also the file NEWS (german)! If problems occur, take a look at the log-file in the fotocd-directory.

Additional files

Each VCD must contain at least one short film. I use it as trailer or since version 0.8.9 as errormessage if PBC is turned off on the player. On a VCD you can use a dummy-video with filesize 0 instead. Vor a SVCD you definitely need a SVCD-video!
The archives don’t contain my mini-videos, you can use a file of your own or you can download one of my files separat:
PBC-ist-ausgeschaltet-Video (VCD, german) (520 KB)
PBC-ist-ausgeschaltet-Video (SVCD, german) (272 KB)
Trailer (VCD, language independent) (989 KB)

Installation:

tar -xzf fotocd-version.tar.gz
change in the directory fotocd-version
run the skript ./install.sh

You will need the following programs:

If you want to place films on the CD you need the following program for the stillpictures:

  • transcode (you can use it also to convert films to mpg)

Hints to some distributions (german)
(SuSE 7.2, 8.1, 8.2, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, Debian Sarge, Ubuntu and Slackware)

Many of this programs are included in current distributions and you only have to install them with the packet-manager. Most distributions contain a version of the mjpegtools, that will not function. For the mjpegtools you can look at the mjpegtools-homepage. Maybe you can find a suitable version for new Suse-distributions at Packman.

Please give me Hints, which versions work. I will publish them here.

Without tho programs mentioned above fotocd would not exist. I thank all developers for their excelent work. fotocd is my little thankyou for this.
Have fun!

More projects

To get a program for building foto-CDs you can also take a look at the following sites:

  • CCDtoVCD
  • KVCDtools (enclosed in Digikam)
  • VCDKompanion