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Best Free DVD Authoring Software
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| I have searched high and low to find a free DVD authoring program that a novice can use. I found it! |
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This software category is in need of an editor. If you are interested in taking it over then check out this page for more details. You can then contact us from that page or by clicking here. DVD Flick aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks, subtitles as well as a menu for easier navigation.
I burned my first DVD movie and it was a complete success. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was.
Other DVD authoring freeware to be reviewed:
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| dvd author software, free dvd authoring software, create dvd software, top dvd authoring software, burn dvd |
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In the past I have tried a number of DVD making programs.
"AVS to DVD" took forever and wasn't always successful.
"DVD Sytler" always crashed my computer after the first few steps.
Favc never worked properly.
DVD Flick for a while produced DVD's with audio out of sync..... although they seem to have resolved this issue now.
The best one I find is DeveDe, It's simple to use once you get use to to it, and generally pretty quick......around half the time as the other programs I have used.......and the great thing is there are hardly any errors, the only time Devede comes unstuck is when I am making a DVD from an amateur rather than a professional source....i.e a home movie vs feature film.
This is where my back up DVD Flick program betters Devede.......it can handle the amateur stuff better than Devede.
That said though Devede is STILL my go to program, and I use Image Burn to burn the DVDs.......I've made lots of DVDs from Devede and have yet to have a coaster!
Devede can create Video Ts files or Iso files, whichever you prefer and the file size is usually much smaller than other programs with no loos in picture or audio quality.
I've now ditched all the previously mentioned programs and only use Devede and DVD Flick.
DVD Flick gets a solid 7/10
Devede gets an almighty 9/10
KL Oxford
Tried many of the previously mentioned with limited success.Though I have found a freeware that really works,DVD Author Plus,easy to use pleasant interface with windows tree style.There's no menu settings,though you can choose aspect ratio and video quality.Also copies,burns data and Iso.As a DVD video author it does the job.
http://www.deskshare.com/dvd-authoring-burning-software.aspx
Has already been suggested a few comments below.
Bombono FTW! http://www.bombono.org/cgi-bin/wiki/
I'm running LinuxMint Debian, it was in the repository (but hard to find, just search by name), installed in a click and runs like a champ. I had a short MP4 movie to burn and without reading the instructions, transcoded and burned it perfectly.
Thanks for the feedback. Good to know it works well. I had suggested it a few months back. It has a commercial version though, and compared to commercial version, the features are very less. Still, for home use, it should be sufficient.
Be very cautious when using DVDStyler, When finished successfully or not. your pc's CPU will keep running at maximum till the program is closed.
My top pick is DeVeDe, takes only a few minutes to set, but an hour or more to learn. Well worth the effort & cpu goes to normal when its done.
I would have to agree with most of the posts that DVD Flick has an audio/video sync problem. If that were to get fixed then I would give DVD Flick another try. I have used both DeVeDe and DVD Styler. The only problem that I saw with DeVeDe was that you are only able to add PNG images to the background. No other image format. I have been using DVD Styler for quite some time now and have been very satisfied.
@pbouthil. If you have any type of picture editing program, like microsoft picture it, you can save any picture to .png format. I use this quite often to meld to pictures into one png picture, so as to burn 2 video files to 1 DVD. works perfectly.
Please look at and test DVD Author Plus 2.28 as a candidate.
http://www.deskshare.com/dvd-authoring-burning-software.aspx
Fairly easy to use, but:
1. Can't save a project.
2. Can't add title menu that displays content of disc and allows choice of which video to start playing. When the disc is inserted, it immediately starts playing from the beginning.
3. The Skip to Next Track doesn't work. All I see on the TV is a red circle with a red slash across it. The fastest way to get to the next track is by going into the Fast Forward mode. At the end of the current track, the next one will start at normal playing speed. Good luck if you want to go directly to track 15, for example.
Rebel try my pick Devede.....simple use and very quick.
Devede gives you the choice of whether you want the disc to play straight away on insertion or not along with a host of other Menu options should you require them.
Devede has no problem with "Next Track" implementation either.
Devede is the best bar none........It's my go to DVD program.
Thanks. Did not know about this software, will try it. Its always good to know about free alternatives.
A new software to look out for. Still in beta for Windows at the moment.
Bombono Authoring : http://www.bombono.org/cgi-bin/wiki/
My computer will not download this program as it says that it is dangerous for my computer. As soon as it is scanned for viruses, the download stops and it gets deleted automatically
Many antivirus programs are riddled with false positvies, so much so that the information they provide is virtually useless. In effect, they attempt to cover their own failings by tagging everything possible as potentially dangerous. A much better way is to gain an assessment from multiple scanners and then make an informed decision based on the results from that. I just uploaded this program to VirusTotal and the result was 0/43
https://www.virustotal.com/file/c3f95bd780c88a2b5f599a2e475a1276d9a37c24...
I had installed it on my PC.. Avira did not complain.
Funny, AVStoDVD doesn't seem to be mentioned here. Funny because I've tried most all the ones mentioned. AVStoDVD is the only one that hasn't crashed and worked right with all the files I've thrown at it.
DVD Flick didn't work very well and wasn't that powerful. DVDStyler has lots of features but it crashes often and doesn't render very well. It's junk. The other ones I tried generally worked OK but weren't good quality.
AVStoDVD renders very well and, best of all, syncs the audio properly. You just don't know what kind of weird codecs you're going to get and it's handled all the ones I've used.
The user interface doesn't look as simple and pretty as some of the others ... it's really just a front end for a bunch of open source Linux ports ... but it's actually the simplest one I've used.
While I've often used recommendations from this site and been quite happy, it seems odd that the only really good freeware DVD author I've found doesn't merit a mention.
My experience with AVS to DVD was rather hit and miss, sometimes it would be fine, other times it would produce a file size too large to fit on a disc, despite selecting the "Fit DVD option".
The main downfall of AVS to DVD is that it takes a long time.......an average time was about 5 hours for a standard 90 min movie.
My pick (See my review above) would be Devede.........it ALWAYS produces a file size well within the capacity limits of a standard blank DVD.....unlike AVS to DVD which produces a much larger file that may exceed your DVD capacity.
Devede is also much much faster with an average time of just 1.5 hours to do a standard 90 minute movie........compared to the 5 hours of AVS to DVD!
As to the quality.......Devede video & audio quality is just as good as AVS to DVD and a little better than DVD Flick.
Would I recommend AVS to DVD........ no especially as DeVeDe is so much better in so many aspects.
Second AVStoDVD. All joy after a few dozen home movie conversions to NTSC and PAL. They have all played perfectly in console players in the States, Italy and Germany.
Just as a side note: This has an 8.5 rating on VideoHelp, which is more than a decent valuation.
Beware of Ask Toolbar bundled with this program. Will also attempt to change your home page.
WinX DVD Author is now free :
http://www.winxdvd.com/dvd-author/
Although, when I had tested its free version some months earlier, it was not very good. I don't know about the present status though.
I tried it and it had some disappointments. It forces you to use a menu, and if you only have one video on the disk, what need is a menu. It is fine if you have multiple videos on the disk and you want to choose which video you want to watch.
It doesn't allow you control over the titles in that you can't choose to either play a single title or play all titles. Worst of all, it advertises itself. The first screen you see is a watermark type screen. If I make a video I don't need to advertise the authoring software, but you have no choice with this.
It doesn't give you the option to just create a DVD folder with the Video_TS and Audio_TS files only and burning. It requires you to burn a disk and if you are unhappy with it, you throw the disk away. If there was a way to preview the actual DVD files prior to burning, you can save money.
When I tried to delete the temp files, which it would not, I was told that I did not have permission to do that. I ended up having to use my wipe program in order to delete the temp files.
To me, it is a step below DVD Styler which does everything this program does and everything else I have mentioned except that it also forces a menu on you. The only program that I have found that allows you to create a menu but doesn't force you to have one is DVD Flick, but it sometimes has audio sync problems along with non customizable menus.
I have made a brief test about WinX DVD Author, Version 5.9 (updated on Feb, 2011). Somewhat it becomes complete free since it never ask me to go register. And now it works for MKV, M2TS or my M4V video as input. I believe someone may give better review for this software since it changed a lot.
How was your experience when you performed the test?
Its fine. Apart from basic DVD authoring features as other tools, I noticed it now also recognizes my SATA DVD recorder which it did not before so that is an improvement over 5.5. It takes around 50 mins to burn a full 4.2 GB DVD, while the quality is pretty cool. No error occurred during my test.
Thanks for posting about this :).
Often, for no apparent reason, DeVeDe does not run.
The official line on their forum is,
"This is something that happens sometimes, kill the process and try again."
I found it flaky to the extreme so I don't trust it now and regret the wasted bandwidth in downloading it.
I know this is several months late, but if Devede doesn't load, run the task manager and kill inconv.exe. Devede will load and work after that. It's a pain that you may have to do it each time you load it.
DVD Styler; interface is really complicated, not user friendly, but works.
Koyote; user friendly, simple, but you can't fast forward or reverse during videos in DVD, I don't know if I missed something.
DVD Flick: was nice, worked for 3 or 4 projects nicely but then started giving errors, and won't do anything now.
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