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How to convert any video format to DVD using DVD Flick |
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There are a lot of guides in our site that cover authoring a video DVD, playable in all standalone players, from various video files. However software keeps improving so we have to adjust our site's content in order to keep it updated to the latest installments. One of those, DVD Flick, an excellent open source program that makes heavy use of ffmpeg in order to convert a massive amount of different video formats and burn them to a video DVD.
In this guide we will explain in detail how to use DVD Flick, and when appropriate compare to other solutions.
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This is the main DVD Flick window. Notice the buttons to Save
or Open a project, Project settings
and Menu settings. To get started we will add a
video file, so click at the Add title button in
the side.
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When the video file is loaded a yellow bar in the left side will show
you how full the DVD disc is. However note that DVD Flick will auto
adjust the bitrate so that you can fill a disc with less or more
content, but it is recommended you don't exceed 3 hours of play or the
quality will greatly suffer. Of course you can add multiple video files
but since in our example we have one big movie we will not add
something else. To continue, click Edit Title
while you have the video selected and move to the next step.
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In the General settings, make sure you write the name
of the movie / episode cleanly as this is what will appear in the DVD
menu. The Target aspect ratio should already by
detected, just check it to make sure it is correct. If needed you can
change the Thumbnail time index in order to
change the thumbnail of the video file that will appear in the program
and the menu. When ready, move to Chapters tab.
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It is a good idea to add some chapters in our DVD in order to navigate
more easily through the movie, so select Create chapters
every and set the time to whatever you like. Next, move to Audio
Tracks.
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The audio track that your source video file contains should be already
added here. Set the default Track language
so that it displays correctly in the DVD player. You may also add
another track (for example you may have an mkv source with more than
one languages). Finally, move to Subtitle tracks.
 | While Matroska (.mkv) is in the list of DVD Flick's
supported formats, some files refused to correctly add the audio tracks
and in some other ones the subtitles where missing. In that case you
can use this
guide to split the mkv file before and add each audio and
subtitle stream manually. |
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In the Subtitle tracks tab you can manage your
subtitle streams. Most of the popular types like .srt, .sub etc are
supported. Add a file and then click Edit
to control the subtitles appearance.
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Here you can set the Language
and change the margin
values so that the subtitles appear where you want them. It's a good
idea to click Auto-fit
or change the size
yourself to your liking. The rest of the options provide pretty good
results as is, so feel free to leave them at their default values and
click Accept. |
Close the Title
settings screen we opened in Step 3 and in the main window
open the Project
settings dialog by clicking the button with the same name.
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In the General
settings make sure the Target
size is at 4.3GB (unless you want to create a DVD9 of
course!) and set the number of Thread
count according to your CPU. (for example for dual core
set it to 2, for quad core set it to 4)
Next, click the Video
tab. |
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Here you have to set the Target
format depending on what your DVD player supports. Encoding profile is
actually a choice between quality and speed. If you want to convert as
fast as possible, obviously select Fast.
Otherwise Normal
is good enough. Use High
only if you have put a lot of video in the DVD (other 2 hours) and you
want to i quality as much as possible. Target bitrate
should be set to Auto-fit.
Finally click at the Burning
tab. |
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DVD
Flick includes ImgBurn in order to create an ISO or burn a DVD right
after it finishes processing the files. Of course if you select nothing
here it will just create the DVD files. It is generally a good idea to
check the video files before you burn the DVD so you may want to leave
this off or just create an ISO. In our example I enabled burning a DVD
right after the encoding is done.
Click Accept to get back to DVD Flick main window and there, click the Menu settings
button on the toolbar. |
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Everything is pretty straightforward here: if you want a menu choose
the appearance you like the most, select Enable menu and Auto-play and click
Accept.
Double-check everything and when you are sure you are ready, click the Create DVD button
in the main window to start the conversion. |
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That's it! DVD Flick is a great piece of free software. While being
extremely powerful and feature full, it remains user friendly. The only
downside I could find was a few bugs when dealing with out of the
ordinary formats like WMV and RealVideo and the conversion speed. Even
in "Fast" encoding profile it was over 50-80% slower when compared to
commercial solutions like ConvertXToDVD.
Generally I suggest you give it a try, you have nothing to lose and
chances are you won't be disappointed, especially when comparing it to
other free / open source solutions. For problems or questions feel free
to visit our forums. |
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thank you
i have so far been unable to get ALL to AVI to work, and my system won't run Super video converter, which came recommended