Burning DVDs

It is some years since I made DVDs which could play on an ordinary domestic DVD player as well as PC, and have forgotten the software to use, and how best to do it.

Any thoughts or recommendations? Free is good, as ever. Files I want to burn include mp4, avi and mkv. These are films. Using W10 32 bit and ordinary 4.7GB DVDs.

Thanks.

Reply to
Graeme
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Win10 should be able to natively cut TV DVDs or CDs if you can find the right incantion/ugly square block to click on. Win7 certainly can.

ISTR it is pretty dumb about size estimates though so something like Nero or a free equivalent might help you retain your sanity.

Reply to
Martin Brown

But not necessarily VIDEO DVDS. Just data ones

IIRC the software I use on linux also works on winders.

formatting link

On Linux it will also burn to the disc as well as allow .iso saves

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

DVD Styler. Works well.

Reply to
Bob Eager

That is two votes for DVD Styler, so I have just downloaded and installed. Will play later. Thanks, chaps.

Reply to
Graeme

It works. Well is relative to your expectations.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I always use imgburn.

Reply to
Old Codger

YWes, ImgBurn is excellent - does what you want and no more, and does it extremely well. I do not often burn CDs/DVDs under windows but that is the one I always use.

formatting link

IIRC it tries (or used to try) to install a couple of spurious extra 'browser toolbar' type applications as part of the installation process - a way for the author to try and get a few bob back. If you pay attention and don't just randomly click on 'yes' to everything when installing you should be fine.

J^n

Reply to
jkn

Surely that just burns images?

The OP wants to 'author' a DVD that a domestic DVD player will understand.

Reply to
Bob Eager

The last version I downloaded a little while ago installed malware on my PC which kept loading web pages for one of the bookmakers, William Hill. I had to improve my antivirus software to eliminate this.

Reply to
Michael Chare

The website says, "You can use it to build DVD Video discs (from a VIDEO_TS folder), HD DVD Video discs (from a HVDVD_TS folder) and Blu-ray Video discs (from a BDAV / BDMV folder) with ease."

Reply to
Max Demian

Exactly, It doesn't *create* the VIDEO_TS folder, or its contents. Which are not simply an MP4.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Do you have a DVD player that will just play the files if they are written to a disc without menus, etc.? TBH, I've not yet seen one (my own player is quite old), but it seems like a silly feature to leave out in this day and age.

Otherwise, if you want menus, chapters, etc., you need (as others have mentioned) DVD authoring software. Problem is, if it then recodes the video to DVD standards (image size, frame rate, etc.), which it always does, unless the video file is already in the correct format, you may noticeably lose some quality. If you are able to just put the files on a data DVD and play that, you won't. Unless they are too big to fit without compression.

I have to admit, though, that I haven't made video DVDs for years. I used NeroVision Express, which seemed good, but trashed my first Win7 machine when I tried it on that. Nowadays, I just share a folder on my PC, and use a Raspberry Pi with Kodi on to play them on the TV.

Reply to
Dan S. MacAbre

Nowadays I just have mindlna on my server, and the (smartTV just plays them anyway.

No need for a Pi at all.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Well, the Pi was a Christmas present - I was looking for something to do with it :-) The media player OS was a pleasant surprise. I'm not sure if my telly will connect to a media server by itself, but I suppose I ought to check.

Reply to
Dan S. MacAbre

He has mp4s etc. He doesn't seem to want to build those folders.

Reply to
Bob Eager

I use ushare, and that does a good job too (apart from when I hosted it on a machine with two interfaces and it picked the wrong one, but I just hacked it a bit)

Reply to
Bob Eager

Then make the pi the media server - it runs minidlna I think.

If the TV is 'smart' its 99% certain it will have a dlna client.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

well at some level he will have to. If its a bog standard DVD player...

The point about dvdauthor is that it does that automagically.

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Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

That's just semantics, and what I meant.

Reply to
Bob Eager

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