Despite the convenience of keeping videos on the cloud or USB drive, DVD is still an important way for people to store video files. You can convert video to DVD for playback on your TV or cleaning up computer storage space.
For whatever reason, all you need is the video to DVD converter software, which is used to write video files to DVD-R or DVD-RW discs. In this article, we have compared the best free video to DVD converters for Mac or Windows.
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There is much less free video to DVD converter software for Mac than for Windows, and the performance is not as good as Windows ones, so below we have picked out just one converter for Mac.
| Name | Platform | Compability | Make menu | Editing function | Speed | Quality | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DVDStyler | Mac and Windows | Good | √ | ☓ | Slow | Good | 4/5 |
| WinX DVD Author | Windows | Average | √ | ☓ | Average | Average | 4/5 |
| BurnAware Free | Windows | Good | ☓ | ☓ | Fast | Not good | 3/5 |
| Sothink Free Movie DVD Maker | Windows | Average | √ | ☓ | Average | Not good | 3/5 |
| DeVeDe | Windows | Poor | √ | Rotating, deinterlacing, etc. | Average | Not good | 2/5 |
Platform: Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, XP, 2000; 10.15 Catalina or later
Best for making video DVD with custom audio/video bitrate and menu
Overall Rating: 4/5
DVDStyler is a cross-platform free video to DVD converter specially designed to create DVD 1/2/5/9. It provides up to 36 languages, including most of the countries with high demand for video to DVD conversion.
The software allows you to beatify the menu using the widgets inside such as backgrounds, buttons, adding ellipse/gold frame/rectangle/text, and more. Also, you can manually select the video bitrate (2MBits/s – 8MBits/s), audio format (MP2, AC3, or PCM), and video format (PAL or NTSC).
Early DVDStyler was pretty bad, but it has improved over time. During our testing, we still found a notable issue, if your converted DVD contains soft or hardcore subtitles, the subtitles will appear as black on a DVD player.
Platform: Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7
Best for configuring DVD encoding speed or quality and DVD language
Overall Rating: 4/5
WinX DVD Author is a lightweight free video to DVD converter that can burn all types of videos. It offers 16 DVD languages for English, Russian, French, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Japanese, etc. users. Before video to DVD conversion, you can choose one of the encoder engines. The faster the encoding, the lower the quality of resulting videos, and vice versa.
Besides converting video to DVD with simple menu and optional subtitles, it can also turn video into VOB, convert VOB or DVD folder to DVD disc, and download video from YouTube. But its existing menu templates are limited in number, not creative, and will not automatically typeset videos for different templates.
Platform: Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, Vista
Best for handling multiple disc burning tasks for data, multimedia, and ISO
Overall Rating: 3/5
BurnAware Free is a smartly implemented free video to DVD converter, helping you burn anything including videos, music, images, documents, and even archives to any disk. Plus, it is capable of erasing used discs to write new files and backing up data.
You can use it to convert HD video to UDF 2.5 on DVD+RW on the fly without having to fully format the disc, so the conversion speed is close to the maximum rating of the disc. You can't burn videos that contain Dolby Digital ac-3 audio, however, BurnAware Free only supports audio encoded with mpeg-2.
Platform: Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 7, XP, Vista
Best for converting video to DVD with external subtitles in the task queue
Overall Rating: 3/5
Sothink Free Movie DVD Maker lets you convert video to DVD on Windows with uploaded subtitles. There are respectively 12 free background menu templates and title menu buttons to choose from. To further customize your DVD menu, you can add text or your local image, external music is not included. Thanks to the small .exe file size, Sothink free video to DVD converter can be installed in less than a minute.
But the free version will turn videos into a DVD with a watermark. And the test shows that 2 out of 5 DVD players can't play the converted DVD, and 1 out of 5 keeps skipping & freezing.
Platform: Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista
Best for burning DVD within the user-friendly interface for an aging media player
Overall Rating: 2/5
As an open-source free video to DVD converter, DeVeDe is readily available on Windows systems. It actually works better on Linux. It can change popular video formats like MP4, MPG, AVI, MKV, etc. to DVD or CD (VCD, SVCD, or CVD). It also has the ability to create DivX/MPEG4 files compliant with DivX home players.
Make sure not to use VeDeVe to convert M4V files purchased from iTunes, otherwise, you won't be able to extract subtitles from M4V. In testing, a full 80-minute MPEG2 video with embedded subtitles only converted for 30 minutes with no subtitles whatsoever.
Obviously, free video to DVD converter software has problems in terms of quality, burning speed, menu creator, etc. Most freeware doesn’t support making a DVD menu and editing videos. Even if there are free templates, they are outdated, making your masterpiece not high-end. Why not use a professional commercial DVD converter?
Cisdem DVD Burner is such a full-featured yet easy-to-use video to DVD converter for Mac and Windows. It can burn SD & HD format videos like VOB, FLV, F4V, M4V, MKV, MP4, MPV, AVI, etc. to DVD disc, DVD folder, and ISO file. Moreover, it lets you edit the video, customize your own DVD menu, and select the most satisfying free templates. All templates are up-to-date for various themes.
For beginners, it will not be as confusing as setting parameters in DVDStyler. Cisdem DVD Burner already has the best parameters set by default for DVD converting.
Step 1. Import a video to the software
Download and install Cisdem DVD Burner on your computer. And then launch the program.
Click "Add videos" in the middle of the interface or click "+" in the bottom left corner to import native video files. Another faster way is directly dragging and dropping videos to the program.
Step 2. Edit video files (Optional)
It’s very simple for you to edit videos. Just click 
under the video and then you can crop it, change the effects, add watermarks or subtitles, make chapters, etc.
Step 3. Create your own DVD menu
Click the “Menu” button, you will find many templates and elements. You can choose one of them to create a special menu for your DVD. Furthermore, you are able to add a favorite song as DVD menu background music.
Step 4. Preview and convert videos to DVD
Preview your DVD playback. If everything goes well, go to the 
panel, make the final set, and click "Burn" to begin converting videos to DVD 5 or DVD 9 on the computer.
DVD, a digital optical disc storage format, provides higher storage capacity than ordinary discs. As everyone knows, DVD includes many types, but the most commonly used ones are DVD 5 and DVD 9.
DVD 5 is also called DVD-5 and DVD5 disc which refers to a single-sided single-layer disc (SS-SL). It’s supported by DVD+R/DVD+RW and DVD-R/DVD-RW. What’s more, DVD 5 holds 4.7GB of data and has the capacity to store 120-min high-quality audio and video.
DVD 9, a single-sided double layer (SSDL), is also named DVD-9, DVD9 disc, DVD-R9, DVD-R DL, and DVD+R9. It’s supported by DVD+R and DVD-R. Meanwhile, DVD 9 can contain 8.5 GB of data and is able to store a 240-min DVD movie or up to a 120-min file definition film.
|
DVD 5 |
DVD 9 | |
|---|---|---|
|
Basic Nature |
Single-sided, single layer |
Single-sided, dual-layer |
|
Storage |
Save data up to 4.7 or 4.37 GB |
Save data up to 8.5 or 7.95 GB |
|
Reusability |
Be able to write data again |
Unable to write data again |
|
Price |
Lower than DVD 9 |
Higher than DVD 5 |
|
Supported Formats |
Supported by DVD+R/RW & DVD-R/RW formats |
Supported by DVD+R & DVD-R formats |
|
Popularity |
More acceptable by people |
Not as popular as DVD 5 |
Free video to DVD converter can indeed complete basic DVD burning, but the process and results are not necessarily satisfactory to you, and are even a bit of a waste of time. We have tested 5 kinds of freeware used for video to DVD conversion. You can try them out. If none of them respond to your demand, use the best commercial software.
Jenny is a technology editor who has been blogging since she was a student. Since joining Cisdem, she focuses on writing articles about video software and how-to guides. She loves exploring new tools and techniques.
