DVD Burning on Debian

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The dvd+rw-tools package provides growisofs to burn DVD images or create DVDs with data, and dvd+rw-format, a utility to format a DVD+RW. You can also check the media information details by using dvd+rw-mediainfo.

In the command used below, /dev/dvd refers to the DVD drive. Change accordingly for your machine.

Method:

  1. Write an pre-mastered disc image(iso or img) to a dvd:
    ~$ growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=imageName.iso
  2. Write files to a dvd(an ISO 9660 filesystem with Joliet and Rock-Ridge extensions):
    ~$ growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J <directory/files to be written>
  3. Merge(add) another session to a DVD-RW
    ~$ growisofs -M /dev/dvd -R -J <directory/files to be written>

Additional flags I often use:

  1. Use -dvd-compat when writing data on a dvd to get maximum compatibility with DVD-ROM/-Video players. Warning: with DVD-R/+R this option closes the disk.
  2. User -V 'volid' to write a volume ID in the master block.
  3. -speed=N to control the writing speed (N denotes speed closest to N*1385kBps). Maximum suppported speeds for a particular media depend on the firmware of your DVD drive too. As an example, Fujifilm DVD-R (8x) and DVD+R (8x) can be written by my NEC ND-3540A DVD writer at a maximum speed of 8x and 16x respectively.

Further details:

  1. Complete documentation for dvd+rw tools http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/
  2. manpage for growisofs
  3. More options can be found in the manpage for mkisofs