Make DVDs for free

Creating your own video DVDs can seem like a hit or miss affair.

There are lots of variables to take into account including the format of your videos, the capabilities of your PC and the range and specification of your DVD player.

Video and audio codecs vary greatly, but so do TV formats (Pal, NTSC, Secam) and movie aspect ratios.

More recent DVD players can resize footage and are capable of decoding a wide variety of codecs, so simply dumping the video files you want to play back onto a disc might be all that’s required.

However, most DVD players need video files to be in the correct format, with a standard file naming convention and folder structure. For this you need DVD authoring software.

Windows Vista and the forthcoming Windows 7 include Windows DVD Maker.

This program is one of the simplest methods of DVD authoring, making dynamic menus and converting a wide range of video formats to DVD.

If a video file will play back in Windows Media Player, then your system has the required codec and Windows DVD Maker should be able to convert it.

This isn’t true of all local playback though.

If you use the more adaptable VLC media player, you’ll be able to view a much wider range of files locally, but it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to convert them in DVD Maker. See the workshop for a detailed demonstration of this program.

Whether you plan to use the finished footage in a DVD or not, the ability to convert video between different formats is very desirable.

If you want to edit video in Windows Movie Maker, the same rule of thumb exists that you will need to be able to play it back in Windows Media Player for the program to support it.

When you come across video files that don’t play back, you’ll need to convert them.

We covered advanced editing techniques in Windows Movie Maker in a recent PCW feature, where we also mentioned Avidemux, a useful application for video conversion and cropping, resizing and processing video.

It works by taking a source video file, selecting the output codecs and size, and then applying filters to the output file. You can apply basic editing to remove unwanted parts of the video.

Filters are available to resize, flip or crop the picture. There’s even one you can use to disguise an on-screen logo.

It can’t recreate the parts of the picture obscured by the logo, but it blends it with the adjacent colours in the image, making it a lot less noticeable and you can preview before and after snapshots before processing it.

Videos based on the Flash video standard generally have file names ending in .flv. To play these on other devices, you’ll need to convert them to conventional AVI files.

Avidemux can do this, but it’s also possible to achieve in a single step using a different tool. You can get a free converter. Download the file and unzip it.

Launch the executable file flvtoavi.exe.

Click Add files, browse to the FLV file to convert and then click Convert to change it to an AVI using default settings.

If your finished DVD is for playback on a DivX-compatible DVD player, then you can use a video converter to compress footage and fit the equivalent of six movies on one disc.

You won’t get any niceties such as custom menus and you’ll only be able to share the disc with people who have similarly capable players, but it can be a very useful way to archive video.

A simple program that automatically reduces the file size of a big mpeg video is Auto Gordian Knot. It’s based on Virtualdub, a predecessor of Avidemux but you don’t have to know the program well use it.

Install the program, launch it and browse to the MPEG video file that you want to compress.

If you want the output file to go somewhere else, you’ll need to supply its location here too.

Some video files have alternate audio tracks.

If this is the case, select the one with the soundtrack that you want to use. You’ll also need to specify a target size for the file.

Use the dropdown list to select this.

Click Add Job to add this to the job list. You can set up several jobs to process overnight.

Click Start to begin the job list.

The first time you run this, you need to accept the licence for Virtual Dub Mod, a component program.

Once Auto Gordian Knot is running, it will take some time to compress the video.

You’ll see a progress log generated as it goes. Leave your computer to get on with the processing.

Once complete, you can view the compressed file or burn it to disc.

Most DVD authoring involves the reverse process. DVDs use MPEG2 video files in a standard format with the file extension VOB.

These may have other information including subtitles and secondary audio multiplexed into them.

They are accompanied by IFO files which contain navigational information, including chapter points and where subtitles and alternate audio streams occur.

You’ll also find files with the BUP extension on a DVD. These serve as backups to the IFO files.