How to Choose a DVD Maker to Burn Video to DVD
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As a professional videographer, I work with many video formats and many types of software to edit videos. One of the most popular formats and a lasting one despite the advancement of technologies is the DVD.
People just love DVDs, whether in the form of exercise instructional videos, home videos, or anything else. It is a very convenient form of recorded media with high clarity, great resolution, and long life.
Over time, the entry of streaming video content delivery services like Netflix and Hulu has started hurting DVD sales, but a silent, new market has also emerged: people downloading content from these services and creating DVDs for posterity!
All said and done, DVDs have been here and will continue to be here for a long time to come. Since I have to deal with them every day, I have come to become a bit of an expert at selecting the right DVD maker software for the right job, and today I want to share some of that wisdom with you.
What to Look for In a Good DVD Creator?
Many times DVD burning requires you to work with multiple media file formats. Did you know that there are over 200 types of audio and video formats? Your DVD maker has to be compatible with all possible options like MP4, MKV, Ogg, FLV, and others. The DVD creator should also be able to work with multiple sound standards like AAC, WAV, and MP3.
DVDs also come in many formats, from DVD 5, DVD-R, DVD-RW, etc. You should make sure that the software or DVD maker that you get should be able to write in any format so that you can complete your task comfortably.
In some cases, you might need to keep a soft copy of the DVD with you in ISO format. The DVD creator should be able to handle these situations too.
While most DVD makers are compatible with Windows Operating systems, it is difficult to find software that can burn video DVD MacOS style for Apple machines.
It's a good option to have video editing tools like merge, copy, rotate, etc., built into the DVD maker itself. It makes the job of doing minor edits a lot easier.
If your DVD creator is not able to include subtitle information in the DVD, your video will remain unreachable to a vast number of people for whom English is not the first language.
Your DVD maker needs to have nice-looking menu templates that are customizable to include your pictures, themes, and other things. This will make the DVD more attractive and personalized.
You never know which device your DVD will be played on. Many people are purchasing super large-sized TV sets and projectors to get the best movie-watching experience at home. Your software to burn video to DVD should have the best output specs and should be able to handle very high-resolution videos.
Your DVD burning program should be able to copy and save meta info from your original videos and then send it over to a media server to be displayed. It will help organize your DVD.
Some DVD makers are better than others at utilizing technologies such as GPU acceleration to make DVD writing faster for you. This is an important aspect of DVD creation; you should keep an eye out for software that can do this because writing a DVD usually takes a lot of time.
In an ideal world, everyone would be happy to get a free DVD maker with all the features mentioned above. While you can get some free DVD creators that can do most of the things that we mentioned, it is difficult to find a free DVD creator without a watermark because the free ones with great features will typically watermark your videos so that they are not used for commercial purposes.
Now that I have outlined what you need to be looking at let's look at some great options to suit every type of user below.
#1). DVDFab DVD Creator: Best Overall DVD Burning Software
This is one of the best DVD makers and one of my personal favorites for DVD creation. It's hard to find good products that have so many features in one place at such a reasonable price.
More importantly, I find that DVDFab DVD Creator is one of the very few options that support DVD burning Macintosh as well as DVD burning Windows. Most other products are Windows-based.
Let's take a brief look at what all DVDFabs products can do:
The product supports video formats that even I didn't hear of! Can you believe that this single product is able to support over 200 video formats for creating DVDs any which way you like?
Not only that, it is compatible with a wide variety of audio formats as well.
And when it comes to DVD burning, this product supports almost all DVD formats that I know of, including the ISO-based soft copy of the DVD.
A video on a DVD is not just the picture and audio quality. There are a lot of other components that go into making the video watchable. These include things like subtitles and meta-information about the original videos from which the DVD was burned. Without these parts of the puzzle, the video is incomplete.
Thankfully DVDFab is able to store all of that and share it with your media server or viewing device, so you get only the best viewing experience.
If you have a projector or a large screen TV at home, I would suggest you only use the DVDFab's product for DVD creation. The video quality that it produces is one of the best in the market; you can confidently run your video on the largest of screens without any danger of blurriness or graininess.
The speed of burning is the surprise factor that makes this product more special than any of its competitors in the market. It can work almost 50 times faster than normal DVD creators by using GPU acceleration techniques.
With such great features, you would think this would be a fairly expensive piece of software, but that's not the case. If you just need to use a DVD creator for a home project or a short time, you can get the product at $24.99 for one month with all features included and compatible with all Operating environments.
If you are looking at a longer-term horizon, you can get a DVDFab DVD Creator for $46.99 for one year, which is a great deal compared to the prices of some of the other software that is available in this market.
Lastly, if you are a pro user, then the lifetime license with all upgrades included is the best option for you. At just $74.99, I would say that this is a steal, and you should go for it immediately.
#2). Cisdem DVD Burner: Best Mac DVD Burning Software
I picked out Cisdem specifically because it's a great option for DVD burning iMac videos. This software can edit videos, has a huge compatibility range, and is a great option for customizing your DVD with special menu templates. It's got all the good features that a DVD burning software should have, except for the price, which is quite steep.
At $49.99 for a lifetime single-user license, you might be better off with a 1-year license from DVDFab, which is very reasonably priced ($46.99) and works well with both Windows and Mac devices.
#3). Win X DVD Author: Best DVD Maker Free
If you are looking for a free DVD maker that has all the great features of the above two DVD makers but doesn't cost you a dime, then Win X DVD Author is the perfect option for you.
It supports a wide variety of audio and video formats and can convert almost any file to DVD very quickly. It also has good editing and video trimming options.
You can upload an external subtitle file into your DVD with this software as well. One exceptional feature of this product is "Deinterlacing" - it takes old videos that were interlaced with horizontal or vertical lines and removes those lines, making your video perfect. You can even download YouTube videos using this product.
To Summarize…
I hope you were able to find all the information that you needed to make sure that you get the best DVD maker for your projects. I outlined all the key attributes you should look for and also enumerated three very good options for you to consider. Each of the options is good in its own way, but overall, I have found DVDFab DVD Creator to be the best option with the most features and overall speed and quality of execution.
So now, over to you. Which DVD Creator will you use for your next DVD project?
