Solved Making a video dvd in Vista

I am familiar with Windows DVD Maker on my Win7 laptop but it does not appear in my Vista (32-bit) laptop.

Is it possible to download it from somewhere for free ?

If not, what's the best similar, free software that will work in Vista ?

Thanks for any answers.

I haven't done much with video editing and effects so I have no recommendation for DVD editing or movie making. But if you just need conversion and burning you may find many high quality free programs here:
VideoHelp - Forum, Guides, Software and DVD lists

Hi

Look here for DVD maker etc.. Movie & DVD Maker

Lottiemansion said:

Hi

Look here for DVD maker etc.. Movie & DVD Maker

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Thanks, tried this but didn't understand any of it!
Seems to be developer stuff, what is SDK anyway?
I'm looking for a simple .exe file I can use to create a DVD from my videos.
Windows DVD Maker is fine on my other laptop (Win7) but doesn't seem to exist for Vista.

If it was supposed to come with Vista look on your Laptop manufacturer's support page. Often you can download a package that has all the pre-installed software. All I could find online was a free trial download with limited features until paid.

MilesAhead said:

If it was supposed to come with Vista look on your Laptop manufacturer's support page. Often you can download a package that has all the pre-installed software. All I could find online was a free trial download with limited features until paid.

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Yes, thanks, I found the same free trial & then pay!
DVD maker came free as part of Win7 but not Vista, why you should have to pay I don't understand.
I suspect it's only from a third party and not Microsoft.

Anyway, I've found a few free alternatives to try : Sothink, WinX, DVD Flick & DVD Styler.

This is what I use:
DVD Flick

Read their guide first:
http://www.dvdflick.net/guide/guide_new.pdf

rufford155 said:

Yes, thanks, I found the same free trial & then pay!
DVD maker came free as part of Win7 but not Vista, why you should have to pay I don't understand.
I suspect it's only from a third party and not Microsoft.

Anyway, I've found a few free alternatives to try : Sothink, WinX, DVD Flick & DVD Styler.

Click to expand...

Also there's an old freeware that sill works. DVDAuthorGui. You convert all video files to mpeg2 dvd compliant(must have navpacks) and this program makes the vob set. It can also add subtitles and chapters.

Imgburn will burn the vob set as a video dvd.

Many thanks for the help.
Got a few to try now, DVD Flick looks good.
Closing this thread now.

Glad you made progress. The only thing to keep in mind with Flick is that it's no longer being developed. V. 1.07 has been out for a few years now. It's still good software. But it may balk with some .mkv input files especially.

Windows Movie Maker and Windows DVD Maker are part of Vista, as far as I know. To burn DVD's directly from Movie Maker, one has to have DVD Maker installed. If you updated to Windows Live Essentials (WLE) in Vista a couple of years ago, there is the newer Windows Live Movie Maker but they didn't provide a companion for DVD Maker. The old DVD Maker doesn't work with the Windows Live Movie Maker. You can burn a video to DVD with DVD Maker, even if you have installed WLE but there's no enhancements available. I assume that DVD Maker will create a DVD-Video. I've never used it (I use Nero).

wither 3 said:

Windows Movie Maker and Windows DVD Maker are part of Vista, as far as I know. To burn DVD's directly from Movie Maker, one has to have DVD Maker installed. If you updated to Windows Live Essentials (WLE) in Vista a couple of years ago, there is the newer Windows Live Movie Maker but they didn't provide a companion for DVD Maker. The old DVD Maker doesn't work with the Windows Live Movie Maker. You can burn a video to DVD with DVD Maker, even if you have installed WLE but there's no enhancements available. I assume that DVD Maker will create a DVD-Video. I've never used it (I use Nero).

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The problem with those is that the DVDs do not play on a regular DVD player - they play only on PCs.

In that case, DVD-Maker isn't creating a DVD-Video, i.e., it doesn't create a Video_TS folder on the disc which is required for automatic playback on standalone players. It's burning a data disc which is only readable on some standalone players. Basically useless. I guess that's why people buy things like Nero, Cyberlink and Roxio, not to mention others.

wither 3 said:

In that case, DVD-Maker isn't creating a DVD-Video, i.e., it doesn't create a Video_TS folder on the disc which is required for automatic playback on standalone players. It's burning a data disc which is only readable on some standalone players. Basically useless. I guess that's why people buy things like Nero, Cyberlink and Roxio, not to mention others.

Click to expand...

The easiest may be just a gui that uses ffmpeg to output an mpeg2 file. You can pull the .mpg file into DVDAuthorGui to output a standard DVD5 or DVD9. You can add chapters by feeding it a file of times, for example every 5 minutes. I always set it to output a VIDEO_TS folder instead of an iso in case I made a mistake or the subtitles didn't come out right. Once you have that you can use Imgburn to burn it on an erasable DVD to test it in your player. Burn it as a DVD+R rather than as an erasable. It should play in your player. As soon as Imgburn sees the VIDEO_TS it will ask you if you want to burn a video DVD. Edit: Note that the first time Imgburn sees an erasable disc used this way it will want to format it as DVD+R or whatever. It takes awhile. But after that you can just quick erase to reuse it for tests.

Once you know it's good burn to a regular DVD blank.

dvdauthorGui is a bit quirky. But after you do a few it's OK as long as you feed it good files.
The .mpg must have the navpacks. If not you need to demux to audio and video and feed those in.

Also the old free TMPGEnc has a simple muxer in the MPG Tools menu. If you mux the audio and video to MPeg 2 system it will put in the navpacks. It will mux in .ac3 even though the rest of the encoder functions do not support it.

Windows DVD Maker was only included with Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions. I have used it, and it definitely burns Video DVDs that can be played in DVD players. (Of course don't burn a DVD+R if the player only supports DVD-R). Video quality was better than the Sonic burner on my old XP system, but the DVD menu options leave something to be desired.

Thanks for the information. Did you burn a media file such as .wmv directly from DVD Maker or did you first start out in Movie Maker and then select Burn to DVD, which should open DVD Maker? I'm just trying to figure out which one creates the Video_TS folder. I guess I could try it when I have time.

I just took a look at the options in DVD Maker and it appears that, since it let's one create a menu and also has a few playback controls, that it does burn a Video_TS. I'll try it when I get time.

AVStoDVD has a pretty easy to use Menu Wizard. I haven't used the program much because I ran into audio conversion problems frequently. But many others swear by it.

Movie Maker and Live Movie Maker has the capability to create better menus then I suspect DVD-Maker has. Too bad that Microsoft decided not to provide compatibility with the Live Movie Maker and the DVD Maker, if one installed Windows Live Essentials. I saw someone was complaining about that in Win 8.

wither 3 said:

Did you burn a media file such as .wmv directly from DVD Maker or did you first start out in Movie Maker and then select Burn to DVD, which should open DVD Maker?

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I have only used it to burn media files directly. I never used Movie Maker for video editing, after all these years I forget the reasons. At the risk of going off-topic, my preferred video editor has long been Adobe Premiere Elements (version 4.0 purchased in 2008, which supported 32-bit Vista and XP). I believe there is free video editing software nowadays but I haven't felt any need to look into the matter.

I just burned a .wmv in DVD-Maker and, indeed, it does create a Video_TS. As a result, it should play in any standalone player. I had told it to create a menu but it doesn't show one when I ask to see the Title Menu.