Making a DVD isnt as easy as it sounds. I had a few AVI files from which I wanted to create a DVD that could be played on my DVD player and viewed on a standard TV. Sounds simple, doesnt it?
Turns out it *is* easy, if you're not trying too much customization.I'm using Vista currently, and it has a cool program called Windows DVD Maker. Just point it to the AVI file, choose the DVD menu template, and it will transcode the AVI to the DVD format, and burn the result to your DVD.
However, if you want to do things like
a) Put multiple movies on one DVD
b) Adjust the height/width of the movie to look better on your TV
Then you need to look at other tools.
The Basic process is this:
1) Look at what kind of file you have AVI,WMV,DivX etc. These are not supported by some DVD players(your computer can play them). You need to convert them to the DVD format. This is called transcoding. I found WinAVI Video Converter and and ConvertXtoDVD useful here.
2) The DVD format basically has a AUDIO_TS and a VIDEO_TS folder with VOB files in the video_TS folder. This can now be burned onto a DVD as a DVD movie (NOT as a data DVD) using special software. Windows DVD Maker cannot write a readymade DVD folder.to a DVD disc, you need software like ConvertXtoDVD, or Nero or Roxio to do this. Some people convert the DVD folder to an ISO image that can be written by any burning software, but I havent tried it.
3) The conversion process is slow, and you may not like the result, so first try out your menu and other settings on a DVD-RW, which you can resuse in case you want to make changes.
I spent the better part of the weekend figuring all this out...and there are other things to take care of, like - what is the aspect ratio you want (4:3 for standard TV and 16:9 for widescren TVs) , whether you want PAL or NTSC (PAL for India), and what speed do you burn with (depends on the type of DVD), etc etc..so I hope this proves useful to someone!
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