Tag Archives: avi to dvd

DVD Authoring, Free Software

DVD Authoring with DVD Flick

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Instead of watching a video file on your computer, you might want to see it on the big TV screen in your living room or family room. While you could hook up your computer to your HDTV, it’s sometimes easier to simply pop a disk into your DVD player. How do you get a video file from your computer onto a DVD disk that you can watch on any tabletop DVD player? Here’s how we do it:

NOTE: You need a DVD burner for this project. Virtually every computer, whether it’s a laptop or a desktop, comes with a burner. If not, you can pick up an external USB burner for under $40.00.

1. Download and install DVD Flick. It’s free, don’t worry.

Photo of DVD Flick Authoring 1
Free and fast, DVD Flick is open source. An excellent product.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. When DVD Flick is ready to go, find the video file that you want to make into a DVD and open it, either drag it into the DVD Flick interface or use the Add button on the GUI. DVD Flick will work with just about any video file, even home movies that you shoot with your camcorder or digicam.

Photo of DVD Flick Authoring 2
Click Add title and find the video file on your computer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. DVD authoring means that you’re taking a plain video file that you watch on your computer using VLC Media Player or Windows Media Player, etc., then adding a clickable menu that looks almost the same as a DVD that you buy in a store and burning it to a writable DVD disk. This final product can be played in any tabletop DVD player as well as in any DVD player in any computer, Mac/Linux or Windows. That means that you have to tell DVD Flick which menu style you want to use. Click Menu Settings to see the choices and make your decision:

DVD Flick Authoring 3
We like the Simple Black option.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. You have to set some parameters for DVD Flick. Click on Project Settings to see this:

Photo of DVD Flick Authoring 4
Click on the Burning tab and choose ‘Burn project to disk’, type the name you want to see on the menu, but leave Speed at 4. You’ll get a better disk that way. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. If you’re going to burn a few copies of the same disk, name your project and save it. That way you can burn the same video at some later date without having to do everything again.

6. Once you’ve got everything set, you have to tell DVD Flick where to save the temporary files it creates in order to make your DVD. Basically, it takes your video file and converts it into a package, according to the parameters you’ve just set, then burns the whole thing to a blank, writable DVD disk. Once you make sure the DVD works, you can go back and delete the files but, for now, look down on the bottom left of the GUI. DVD Flick saves the first DVD you make in a folder named ‘dvd’, usually in your Documents folder. You can either name each folder with the name of the video or add a number at the end of ‘dvd’ as we have here:

Photo of DVD Flick Authoring 6
We’ve burned six separate DVDs, as you can see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s pretty much all you have to do. When you’re ready, click ‘Create DVD’ up at the top, after making sure you have a blank DVD disk in the burner.

NOTE: We have wondered how many videos we can put on one DVD. The answer doesn’t seem to be out there but we’ve figured out that if you use a time limit of about an hour and a half, you’ll be fine. If the video you are burning isn’t great quality to begin with, it is possible to get a couple of full-length movies on one DVD. If you’re burning home movies, you can create separate menu titles for each one.

Lastly, this process is NOT for ripping a DVD that you have purchased. DVD ripping (copying) is not the same as authoring. We use DVD Shrink for ripping. It’s free and we may write about it at some point later on.

Thanks for reading! Questions or comments are welcome. You can also ask questions on our Facebook page. Here is the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook 

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AVI to DVD, Computers, Windows DVD Maker

Avi to DVD

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We had some AVI files that we’d recorded over the last few months. While they play well on a computer, we wanted to share them with family members during the upcoming holiday season. As is the case in most families, not all of our relatives are experienced computer users. What we needed was a way to convert those AVI files into a format that would allow them to be played on a standalone DVD player.

We searched the Internet for different options, with free being the key word. In the past we had used PowerDVD but none of our current computers came with that bit of software. Sure, there are several professional solutions but we were looking for something that didn’t cost money. We finally found that solution. As it turns out, it was right under our nose. Here’s how to make a DVD from an avi file.

Tip: This process works with Windows 7. You may be able to download the software from Microsoft but, at this point, Windows DVD Maker is only available in some versions of Windows 7.

1. Get your AVI files together. Total time for a DVD is about 150 minutes so you can make chapters with several different AVI files as long as the total time doesn’t exceed 150 minutes.

2. Insert a blank writeable DVD into your CD/DVD burner. The following menu should pop up:

Photo of DVD Menu
Choose ‘Burn a DVD video disk’.

A DVD video disc is one that will play on a DVD player or on a computer. It is different from a data DVD, one that may contain AVI files plus documents, etc. , because it is presented in the same style as a DVD that you rent or buy from a video store. There will be a splash screen when the DVD opens,  the same as what you see when you play a Hollywood or Bollywood blockbuster video disc.

2. Here’s the next screen that you will see:

Photo of DVD menu 2
Drag and drop your AVI files into this window.

You can either add items using the ‘Add items’ button or drag and drop files into this window. Take note of the little icon on the bottom left, the grey pie with ‘0 of 150 minutes’ beside it. As you add AVIs, this icon will show how many minutes are left out of the initial 150 minutes. If you go over the limit, a section of the pie will be in red.

Also, see where it says ‘DVD title’ with the date? Click in that area to make a name for your DVD. You can do it later but it’s easier to do it now.

3. Once you’ve added the AVI files, click Next. This menu pops up:

Photo of DVD menu 4
The AVI icon shows as a strip of film. Cool huh?

We’re using a 32 second film just to show you how this is done but you will see the timing of every AVI file you add to the previous menu. There is a status indicator and the pie chart shows a whole lot of open space. Your menu will be different. Note where we have typed ‘Family Movie’ . Click Next and this menu pops up:

Photo of DVD 5
Here is where you choose the look of your splash screen.

 

Click on the menu styles on the right and choose which one looks good to you. There are other choices here, too. You can preview how things will look or customize the menu or create a slide show. We’ll deal with the last choice in another post.

Make sure you have changed the title. If you forgot, click on ‘Menu text’ and this menu will allow you to change the title and a few other things:

 

You can change the title here, add notes, change the names of the buttons, etc.
You can change the title here, add notes, change the names of the buttons, etc.

 

4. Once you’re ready to go, click on the Burn button and Windows DVD Maker will go to work and, depending on the speed of your computer, will shoot out a completed DVD in a matter of minutes. For us, on a relatively fast computer, the process took anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes. The time seemed dependent on the source material. We made DVDs from different types of files, not just AVIs. You can experiment with which files work and which don’t. We had an OGV file that stalled the program but there aren’t many OGV files around these days.

 

We love free! Here is a very cool bit of software that’s tucked inside of some versions of Windows 7 and we were lucky enough to find it. We were amazed at how easy and intuitive the whole process was and we were just as amazed at how good the final product looks. With this free app, you can create very professional results in just a few minutes.

Thanks for reading! If you have questions or comments, feel free to fill out the form below and we’ll respond as soon as we can.