Create A DVD With AVStoDVD
Open Source and free software programs that can replace specialized commercial software are constantly gaining popularity.
They are often the better solution to commercial software. A good example is AVStoDVD which can be used to create a DVD from video files.
The software supports many popular video formats including avi, flv, mpg and mov, all of which can be added to the DVD. Both DVD-5 and DVD-9 formats are supported by the application.
One great feature of the software is that it automatically calculates the best Bitrate so that all movies that have been added fit to the active project are stored on it in the best possible quality.
Create A DVD With AVStoDVD
This makes it easier for users who don't want to calculate the best bitrate, resolution, and other technical parameters that are important when mastering video DVDs using the program.
It's obviously not possible to add an unlimited number of movies but if you can live with a reduced image quality, you can pack more videos on a single DVD. This is useful for instance when the video quality is not that important, for instance when the audio is more important.
When you start the program for the first time -- a portable version and installer is provided -- a quick startup tutorial is displayed that you can use to verify core preferences such as the DVD Video standard (PAL or NTSC), the preferred audio and subtitle language, and encoding preferences.
I did not have to change anything on the test system as they were dead on as auto-detection kicked in.
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 you have to add videos to the queue of the application.As mentioned before, you can add as many videos as you like but the output quality of the DVD may be reduced if you add too many. The program indicates that by displaying a red output size instead of a green one.
If that is the case, you may want to remove files from the queue again to make sure the videos fit on the disc without a loss in quality.
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 has only one movie but should be mandatory if it has several videos. 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 video. 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. The time depends a lot on the source files that you add to the queue though. Jobs can be queued so that it is possible to create several DVDs in one go.
Conclusion
If you are looking for a program to burn video files stored on your local system to DVD, then AVStoDVD is a great choice for that. The DVD authoring tool is free and supports all the major features that you expect from a program of its kind.
Hmmm… doesn’t work on mkv files. Oh well.
Thanks. I was looking for something like this to convert the .mkv file I’ve found of the Olympic’s opening ceremony from China’s CCTV.