I researched plenty of popular commercial and free apps to make DVD on Mac, and make reviews by scouring customer’s comments, as well as my personal practical experiences through testing numerous DVD burning software one by one before. In this article, I would show you the most useful and comprehensive review on the best DVD creator for Mac. Move on to check their pros and cons in detail.
There are lots of options to burn video to DVD on Mac, like Apple software iMovie and iDVD. Unfortunately, they no longer support making DVDs since OS X 10.7 Lion. This part will introduce the best DVD creator for Mac to you.
Size: 76.8MB
System supported: M1/M2 machines; macOS 10.12+, including Sequoia; Windows 10, Windows 11.
Our take: Cost-efficient, user-friendly cross-platform DVD creation software that creates playable and high quality DVDs with menu, chapter and subtitle, even for beginners.
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Cisdem DVD Creator stands firmly as the top choice to make videos to DVD on Mac, because of its intuitive, powerful features, and less cost.
The app supports burning DVDs from any video source, including videos downloaded from websites, transferred from portable devices or older tapes like VHS, recorded from Mac, and so on. There is a range of non-linear editing options for you to edit the added videos and yield professional results.
It also provide various fancy DVD menu templates for people to choose to make an exquisite DVD. Besides the preset templates, you can also create a DVD menu manually by customizing the elements and gadgets like button, borders, text, etc. inside the menu. Plus, you can upload a new background image, or just set the color to the background. You can also import a background song in any audio format such as MP3, WAV, M4A, etc. If you don’t want the DVD menu, simply tick the no menu option.
This best DVD maker for Mac supports an array of output DVD types including DVD-9, DVD-5, DVD±R/RW, DVD±R DL, DVD-RAM, DVD folder, and ISO file. What makes it more special is that it specially provides 5 playback modes according to people’s habits, including looping mode. All in all, it is a simple yet powerful for people to use, even the novices can get started easily in seconds.
Size: 1GB
System supported: macOS 10.14 (64-bit) or above
Our take: Creating pro-level DVDs from music, video, photo, and data files both on Mac and Windows. Will reduce output DVD quality.
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Toast 20 Pro is a full suite for video conversion, raw photo editing, screen recorder and DVD making on Mac. It has a mixed bag of features for you to process your videos and DVDs, and it archives the different functions to specific sections, offering a straightforward interface for users to make tasks easily by moving to the corresponding section. Moreover, it allows you to pin the common-used function to the home page and rearrange the order by dragging the icon simply.
It's an upgraded version of the Toast 19 Pro with new features like template designer for choosing from 100+ disc menu templates, audio tag editing, painter essentials 8 and WinZip 9. It contains lots of options for burning video and audio projects, as well as editing them before doing so. But the resulting quality can’t get maintained at the same level as the original files. It may also suffer from some stability issues, and it is unavailable for macOS Sequoia.
Personally speaking, the DVD menu templates it provided are a little bit ugly. Although it provides customization features for people to create DVD menu, it is complicated for novices in some extent. So if you are sophisticated in software and have free budget ($94.99 for a Toast 20 Pro) , this DVD creator will be a great option.
Note: Roxio keeps updating its software. You can purchase the older versions from Amazon.
Size: 9.2MB
System supported: Mac OS X 10.5 or above; Windows.
Our take: Multi-functional DVD creator with support for over 20 yet old-fashioned menu templates, and automatic installation of additional free video editors.
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Express Burn is a reliable optical DVD creator for Mac. You can use it to copy DVDs except for protected commercial DVDs and burn audio/ video/data into DVDs.
To edit videos with it, you need to initiate the VideoPad program. Its non-commercial home version can be opened in Express Burn and installed straightly on the Mac. VideoPad is a bit similar to iMovie, which is difficult for beginners, but not as professional as iMovie.
Express Burn makes it quite simple to build a DVD disc if you don't need to edit the video and DVD menu. Just drag homemade videos into the program and start to burn. As for DVD menu, it offers 10+ DVD menu templates to modify the DVD. But people cannot customize the DVD menu manually as the upper two tools.
2 out of 10 tests with the new version ran into the problem. This DVD maker Mac was unable to create dual-layer DVDs, ejecting 20% when burning big files during the finalization stage, with nothing written to the disc.
Size: 74.6MB
System supported: Mac OS X 10.15 Catalina or greater; Windows.
Our take: Free and cross platform DVD creator that offers creative DVD menu, but crashes accidentally.
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DVDStyler is an open-source DVD creator for Mac that enables you to import AVI, MOV, MP4, MPEG, WMV, etc. videos. You can use it to make video files to DVD for playback on any standalone DVD player, but also create photo slideshow.
It provides selectable bitrates from 2MBit/s - 8MBit/s. You can also set the bitrate to automatic mode or specify a custom value. When the video bit rate is 4.5 MBit/s, a 4.7GB DVD can store up to 126 minutes of video. Plus, you can choose and preset the DVD PAL or NTSC from different resolution.
DVDStyler is a good free DVD authoring software for Mac, which provides many DVD menu modes. Besides, it allows you to change the menu buttons, background images and more adjustment to create a DVD menu. What’s more, it provides many hidden features by right-clicking.
But, you can’t expect too professional quality works from it. Sometimes, the picture of the burning video is static or just moving green and gray pixels. The possible reasons for causing this may diverse, for example, the original video quality is not good enough, the burning file is too large or other technical reasons.
Size: 16.3MB
System supported: Mac OS X 10.4 or higher
Our take: Open source and best free DVD maker that comes with 5 operation modes except for video DVD burning mode.
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SimplyBurns is a very traditional-looking DVD creator for Mac with the ability to burn CD/DVD media on Mac. It supports ISO9660, Joliet, HFS+, UDF, DMG, CUE/BIN, audio, etc. as the input files. Meanwhile, it offers other functions like DVD ripping and 1:1 coping.
This best Mac DVD maker makes sure you keep your projects on hard disks by regarding them as documents. Multiple projects can be created or edited. If you just want to make a playable DVD without any editing features, grab this free DVD authoring software for Mac.
Size: 62.1MB
System Supported: Mac OS X 10.9+
Our take: Totally free DVD creator for Mac that helps burn looping DVD and CD.
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Burn is also an open-source app to make data, audio, video, and copy discs. It is an uncluttered, easy-to-use DVD creator for Mac. You can do some presetting before starting the burning process, and do simple DVD menu making, so that you can create your personalized DVD-Video discs using themes.
If you want to put your large video files over 2 hours into DVD 5, you can pick the "DivX" output option for compressing the video to a smaller size for the DVD. But not all DVD players will play DivX DVDs. And the quality of the video will drop significantly if the video gets encoded.
Note: no matter what format of the video that you add to the program is, even MPG video file, it always asks you to convert the added file to MPG format before burning DVD.
Size: 647.24 KB
System supported: Mac OS X 10.2/10.3/10.3.9
Our take: Tiny and handy DVD creator for older Mac.
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Disk Burner, developed by CentroMedia, is also known as Disc Burner. It's a lightweight DVD maker for Mac to manage, burn, share, and store your media and digital content like audio, videos, photos to CDs, and DVDs. Not only does Disk Burner let you create DVD on Mac, but keep a close eye on data security. However, it cannot be found on the internet currently. So this tool is only suitable for the person who has installed it before.
From the list, we can easily get the winner - Cisdem DVD Burner. It has a good advantage in pricing, quality, and functions. If you search for a formidable program for DVD making and video conversion, you can overburn expensive price to download Toast 20 Pro from Roxio. Undeniably, the free DVD creator for Mac (like DVD Styler, Burn) helps you to make DVDs as well, but they are pretty simple without more high-level functions.
Once you launch the app on Mac, it presents its main interface. Just drag-n-drop multiple videos in batches to it, and it will finish loading in seconds.
Click under any video thumbnail on this app. Go to edit and personalized video for a better visual look.
Move to the menu tab, all DVD menu templates will be browsed on the left side. Choose your favorite theme, or add a background picture/track as you like.
If needed, switch to the preview tab to view the find appearance of the DVD before burning. To do so, you can get a satisfactory DVD without wasting the disc.
Switch to the final tab > complete the burn settings > click on the “Burn” button to start making a DVD.
Based on my personal experience, DVDStyler is the best free one, which can not only burn a CD or DVD disc without watermark for free, but also offers some editing features that provided by those paid DVD authoring software Mac, such as DVD menus, subtitles, audio tracks and more.
No, neither of them is a DVD maker for Mac.
If you have video in DVD format and standard DVD resolution, VLC will be able to convert it to an ISO image with the help of a plugin called Hive.
HandBrake is a transcoder to convert any video format and DVD to MP4 and MKV. It can also remove DRM from DVD if you install libdvdcss.
iDVD has always been available on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or before OS, but the software has stopped upgrading.
For 10.7 Lion to 10.14 Mojave users, you can buy iLife Suite or iDVD on eBay or Amazon.
iDVD is not available if you are using macOS Catalina or later, as Apple officially ditches 32-bit app support since Catalina.
Finder, the default file manager on all Mac systems, can free you from installing third-party programs. It offers an extra function in burning CD and DVD discs, which is easy to use for everyone by inserting a blank disc, putting the files to a folder and then clicking “Burn” button to start the task. However, it can only support burning data DVDs.
Among the reviews of the 7 best DVD creation software Mac, Cisdem DVD Burner provides the best mix of value and performance. It is more intuitive to make a DVD on Mac without any loss. The excellent video editing and DVD menus functions are its bonus points.
Some users would not take Toast 20 Pro into consideration. It is much expensive and overloaded with full suite functions, some of which would be shelved aside. Moreover, it takes a larger hard drive space up to 1GB, which is not good for Mac running.
Express Burn is an easy-to-use tool, but compared to Cisdem DVD creator Mac, it has room to make more improvements.
The reason why I put the 4 free Mac DVD creators on the list is that they can meet the basic DVD burning requirements without paying. Note that Disk Burner two only works on a lower version of Mac.
In all, the main items we look at are the value of compositive features during our reviews, like output quality, DVD making speed, some bonus features like edit, menu, affordable price, as well as quick and reliable company support.
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.