How to Create a DVD from Video Files using Jesterware Video Converter Professional

Here is the scenario – You have several DivX, MPEG4 or some other assortment of video files and you want to create a DVD for use in your standalone DVD player. How can you do this with Jesterware Video Converter Professional?

It’s worth pointing out that Video Converter Professional v4.01 does not have any DVD burning or mastering capabilities of its own (there will be in a future version). Currently Video Converter Pro can create DVD compliant MPEG2 video files. But don’t close this document just yet; if you follow the steps below you can create a full DVD that will play in your DVD Player, very, very easily.

1. Setup the correct settings in Jesterware Video Converter Professional.

In Video Converter Professional, you need to change the following settings in the property pane.

It is also advisable to set the Frame Rate to the source videos frame rate, instead of leaving this as Same as Source.

You can of course, create a profile, once you have set the above parameters in Video Converter Professional. You may want to create two profiles, one for PAL and one for NTSC as the video size differs. It’s entirely up to you. Remember, all a profile does, is allow you to save video and audio settings so you don’t have to set them each time you want to create a particular type of video file output.


2. Open and load your video files into Jesterware Video Converter Professional



In the example above, i have loaded four video files, which are going to be my four video titles on the DVD. One of the files is an MPEG2 Video; two are XViD video files and one is a DivX video file. So quite an assortment of files to create a DVD from. You will noticed, I’ve changed the output filename to Title 1.mpg and Title 2.mpg. You DO NOT have to do this. You can leave them with their default filenames. When you’re happy you’ve got everything set correct, press the Conversion button.



When the conversion process has finished, you will have a number of .mpg files in your output folder.

3. Authoring and Creating the DVD

Ok, now you have your DVD compliant MPEG (.mpg) video files created in step 2. You are ready to create a DVD from these. Video Converter Professional has no DVD mastering capabilities of its own, So how are we going to turn your MPG files into a DVD ?

A wonderful FREE piece of software called DVDAuthor Download and install the DVDAuthor package.When DVDAuthor has been installed, run DVDAuthor.

You should see the following dialog.

Change the DVD format accordingly to PAL or NTSC.

DVD Author will create a folder structure called VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS within a folder of your choice. You can also tell DVDAuthor to create an ISO file, which is a lot easier to handle post conversion.

If you want an ISO file created - From the DVDAuthor File Menu, select the option Create ISO after Authoring

Now we are ready to add your .mpg files created in step 2.

From the DVDAuthor main program window, press the Add Title button

You can now browse to and choose your .mpg files created in step 2.

If you cannot see your .mpg files, ensure you change the option below in the Open File dialog box to

MPEG with NAV Packets (*.vob, *.mpg, *.mpeg) – as shown below

Repeat the process, for each .mpg file you have.

Now you’ve got all your .MPG files loaded into DVDAuthor, it should look similar to this

If you only have one mpg file, then obviously, you will only have one title entry in the dialog above.

Now press the author DVD button

A file dialog window will appear as shown below

You must enter the name of a folder; I’ve chosen a folder called My DVD (the folder does not exist. DVDAuthor will create one for you) Just ensure you know where this folder is being created.

Then press the Save button

Finally you will see a log window.

This is just a verbose output of what DVDAuthor is doing.

When this has completed, you will have a DVD ISO file, which you can then use to write to a blank DVD using your favourite DVD Burning software.

DVD Author has created two things

1. A DVD ISO file, called My DVD.iso

2. A My DVD folder that contains VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS sub folders

YOU ONLY NEED TO WRITE/BURN ONE OF THE ABOVE ON A BLANK DVD.

I would recommend, if you don’t know what to do with the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders, then you use the ISO file

This is the ISO file you can write using your DVD burning software as an image file.