DeVeDe displays a disc type selection wizard on start up. Most users will use the program to transfer video to DVD, but it can also be used to create Video CDs, Super Video CDS, China Video Discs and Divx and MPEG-4 media files compliant with players that support the DivX format.

Once you have made your initial selection you are taken to the disc structure menu. You add video files to the disc here. The add video window offers many configuration options, from selecting audio tracks to adding subtitles and previewing the selection.

The program displays the total disc space requirement which can be used as an indicator of how much free disc space is left on the selected output disc format. It can happen that the file size of all videos that you want to burn on the disc is larger than the available disc space. You can either click on the adjust disc usage button to adjust disc usage automatically or switch to another disc type to increase the available space. The program will convert the video files automatically if the first option is selected.

The program displays information about the selected video source and output. This includes the original and final size, the play time, video rate, audio rate and frames per second.

It is furthermore possible to edit and preview the menu here. Editing options include changing fonts, selecting menu background images and menu music, changing a title’s position and if the disc should display the menu on startup or play the first title right away.

A click on Forward in the main configuration window runs the conversion. Devede creates an ISO image by default, the output format can be switched to a Video_TS structure or a conversion of the films to compliant MPEG files.

The DVD authoring tool is a suitable program both for inexperienced and tech savvy users. Inexperienced users can create video DVDs with just a few clicks. Experienced users will like all the advanced options that the program offers.

Windows users can download DeVeDe from the Windows project site. the program is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. The program manual, support forum and source code can also be accessed there. Linux users find the latest version of DeVeDe for their operating system here.

The software supports many popular video formats like avi, flv, mpg and mov that can be added to the DVD. Both DVD-5 and DVD-9 are supported as well. One great feature of the software is that it automatically calculates the best Bitrate so that all movies that have been added fit on the selected DVD.

This takes some pressure from the user who does not want to have anything to do with bitrates and DVD quality. It’s obviously not possible to add an unlimited amount of movies but if you can live with a reduce quality you can pack more film on the DVD.

The DVD creation process requires minimal input from the user. Experienced users on the other hand can customize the settings to optimize the output.

To create a DVD the user has to add movies to the video queue of the application. A click on Start starts the DVD creation. No other input whatsoever is required.

AVStoDVD creates a DVD by default which can be changed in the options. A dvd menu is for instance not required if the DVD contains only one movie but should be mandatory if it contains several movies. The menu can be edited by the user if he has the desire to do that.

Another interesting feature is the ability to add subtitles to each movie. That’s as uncomplicated as the rest of the options.

The process to create a DVD took around 1:20 hours on my system. Creating a DVD-9 should take roughly double that time. Jobs can be queued so that it is possible to create several DVDs in one go.

DVD Flick is a powerful DVD authoring software which is able to automatically create a DVD from various video formats such as apple quicktime, divx, flash video and mpeg. There is no need to convert them into a DVD compliant format, just load them into DVD Flick and it will do the rest for you. All that needs to be done after DVD Flick finished generating the files is to burn them.

You should take a look at the projects settings before proceeding to generate the DVD. You may select a different target size such as CD, DVD-Ram or Mini-DVD, change the target format between PAL and NTSC and change the quality of the encoding process. A better quality or a second pass results in a longer generation time but also in a better video and audio quality.

You may select the audio format and bitrate and opt to generate a iso file instead of a video_ts folder. It is also possible to burn the new DVD right after the generation finishes.

The only thing that is really missing is the missing menu feature. There is no way to create a menu at this moment which means all files are played in a row which could get confusing if you have many small movies on a DVD.

You do need two freeware programs for the whole procedure. The first is called Super. Super is a great converter that is able to convert to many formats including a DVD compliant MPEG II format. The second freely available application is DVD Styler which we will use to create the navigation of the DVD and the DVD iso file. We can finally burn the iso image using a program that is able to burn such images.

Start Super the video converter and change the following settings. The output container should be mpg (MPEG II). Everything else can remain the way it is. Drag and drop a avi file into Super and click on Encode (active files). Super will start the conversion and output the new mpg file in the directory where it is installed. The process might take a while depending on your cpu, graphics adapter and the size of the movie.

Once the conversion is finished we start DVD Styler and create our DVD menu which will later be used to navigate the DVD and start the movies that have been added to it. DVD Styler has a somewhat unusual interface which requires some explanation.

Action defines the next step after the first button is pressed. We want to play the first movie which is the default value for the first button. Add a second button to the menu and name it accordingly. Now we want the second movie to start which means that we have to select Jump to Title 2 instead of Title 1.

Continue this for all the movies that you want on the DVD.

Start by selecting a background from the left background menu. Now add the newly created mpg files by dragging and dropping them into the lower bar of DVD Styler next to Menu 1. The movies should appear on the right side of Menu 1.

A very basic menu would look like the following. Click on the buttons tab on the left side of the program. Drag and Drop one of the buttons to the right pane. You can move it around and make it smaller or bigger. Right-click the button and select properties.

The first thing that we should do is change the label that appears in the menu. Rename button 1 to the name of the first movie.

You could also create separate menus for every movie. Do this by right-clicking the lower pane which contains menu 1 and all the movies that we have added to it. Select Add New Menu and Menu 2 will appear in the pane.

You do need to create a button that opens Menu 2. The process is similar to linking to a movie. Right-click the button and select properties. Choose Menu 2 in Jump to and the link has been created.

Adding screenshots or boxart is easy as well. Just drag and drop them into the menu area and place them accordingly. Once you are satisfied with the results click on File in the menu and select Burn DVD. Select the temp directory and the output directory. Make sure you have enough space in both.

You can find further help in the DVD Styler wiki.