Tools for Creating Custom DVDs
Like my previous post, I occasionally create custom DVDs but can never remember how I do it. Here’s what I can remember.
DVD Styler
Homepage: https://www.dvdstyler.org/en/
This is a DVD authoring tool, the thing that takes all the video, audio, subtitles, menus, etc and creates the final DVD. It has a WYSIWYG editor for DVD menus, and a GUI for choosing video files to use.
HCenc
Homepage: http://hank315.nl/
This is an MPEG2 encoder. It’s useful since your video needs to be in MPEG2 format to be a valid DVD. DVD Styler can automatically convert other formats (like H264, etc) to MPEG2 (I think it uses ffmpeg?), but it gives you very little control.
This outputs an elementary stream. DVD Styler will recognize elementary streams, but it might be more useful if muxed into a container.
(Note from 2025 me: HCenc accepts AVIsynth scripts. I used this to downscale the source to NTSC resolution of 720x480. If the video is widescreen, make sure to mark it as anamorphic in DVD Styler)
ImagoMPEG-Muxer
Homepage: https://www.videohelp.com/software/ImagoMPEG-Muxer
This muxes elementary streams of video and audio (like the output of HCenc) into a program stream, like a VOB. I remember this being useful but can’t remember why?
Aegisub
Homepage: http://www.aegisub.org/
The best subtitling tool out there. Great for creating/cleaning up subtitles. Output in .srt for DVD Styler to convert them into DVD subtitles.
I can’t remember what I use for audio but here’s some info anyway
DVDs accept PCM (.wav) or 5.1 Dolby Surround (.ac3) as valid audio formats. If you have something like an MP3 or AAC, you can use ffmpeg or Audacity to convert them.
