Hacksar

If you’ve been reading some of our previous posts (primarily the ones on BitTorrent), or even if you have a digital video recorder, you may have noticed that getting the files onto a DVD for easy DVD player playback is much harder that it seems. Almost 99 out of a 100 times, your DVD player won’t be able to just play a video file if you just drag/drop and burn whatever video file to a DVD. When you do that, you are usually burning a data DVD, which is specially meant for only PCs to read them; DVD players usually can’t.

However, if you ever have wanted to create your own DVD, whether it was a home video or just some other collection of video clips you’ve had, there is a way to do it. What you want to do is author the DVD. When you use DVD authoring programs, you have the ability to set not only the video to play on a DVD player, but also to create aspects of the DVD such as the menu screen, scene selections, and more. There are many programs that can do this for you, the best being free. Keep reading for the list and a quick guide on how to use the best one.

Here’s a quick list of my favorites in order from best to… good (all are freeware):

1. AVI2DVD
2. HandBrake
3. DVD Flick
4. DVDStyler

I personally use AVI2DVD all the time, as it always gets the job done and is incredibly easy. So, in this guide, I’ll be outlining how to use AVI2DVD. The other programs work the same way, and you can read their documentation for complete coverage.

1. Download, install, and run AVI2DVD.
2. This program is made to be as simple as possible; click the large “Load avi/ogm/mkv/wmv” button found in the “Step 1 Input” tab and that box. Select the file that you want, and the rest of the options in that tab shouldn’t need any alterations.
3. Switch to the second tab of “Step 2 Output” and choose DVD and DVD-5 4.7 GB (that’s a regular DVD-R, single layer. If you’re lucky enough to have a dual-layer burner and blank DVD, you can choose the DVD-9 option. Then, you can also press the folder icon at the bottom left, next to the blank input box, to navigate to which folder you want the output to be saved to. You don’t need to change any of the other options here, but you can fiddle with things like how many minutes you want each chapter to be, and if you want to make an ISO or IFO (image files or VIDEO_TS folder to be burned directly).
4. Don’t touch anything in “Step 3 Encoders” unless you’re an advanced user and know what you’re doing.
5. If you have the appropriate file for subtitles, you can add them in “Step 4 Subtitles”. Otherwise, you can skip this step as well.
6. In “Step 5 DVD Menu”, you have 3 tools. The “Capture Images” tool allows you to capture screenshots from the movie in order to use as a background for your DVD menu. If you want to add background music to the menu, then it needs to be in mp2 format, so an mp3 to mp2 converter is included. Once you have all the files ready (background image and mp2 music file), you can go to the Create DVD Menu tool. Here, you can create your own DVD menu with any text, buttons, etc, that you wish to include. Make sure you include the necessary buttons like play, etc.
7. Once you finish making your DVD menu, press the large green GO!!! button, and it will begin encoding your movie. Let it go for however long it goes (it can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the power of your computer).
8. Once it is done, you can burn the video file using something like Nero Burning ROM and burn it as a DVD-Video. (If you saved it as an ISO and don’t have Nero, you can use the freeware software ImgBurn to burn it as well.)

Now, you can make your own home-made DVDs! Keep in mind that DVD-R work the best (as opposed to DVD+R, DVD-RW, or DVD+RW), and that (for some reason) random company DVD players (Apex, Daewoo, Coby, etc) play these DVDs more readily than namebrand DVD players (Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, etc).

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