Any suggestions for a decent alternative to iDVD?

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Level 1

135 points

Any suggestions for a decent alternative to iDVD?

I was able to create DVDs with iDVD (7.1.2) until July this year and now, when I have to create a slightly less complex one- I am up the proverbial creek with it throwing up a glitch, with the top sixth being cut off as you preview it. I have tried without chapter markers (in case there was an issue with one being too close to a transition etc), shorter video files, different codecs- you name it, no difference.

But, as is ever the case- there is some urgency so rather than spend more time trying to placate my beloved iDVD, I got Roxio Toast 20 Pro (drat- it's horrible, except for the ability to set chapters in the project) and am about to have a melt-down.

It all worked fine, custom templates created after much testing and playing around, main page and chapter page set up, chapters created, media added yadda-yadda-yadda and even burnt (to disk image and then also to physical disk). It starts OK-ish-ish (bit jerky) but the navigational menu is useless. There is no way to select anything and the selected option doesn't highlight, so that I was wildly clicking and random scenes played.

Their support is pretty dire, addressing me in Ukrainian and Spanish in the chat window which opened despite me trying to open a support ticket by email.

TL;DR^- I would welcome any suggestions for DVD Creation software that is reliable and which allows a reasonable amount of customisation (iDVD was pretty awesome that way) and the creation of up to 9 chapters on a single page.

Thank you for reading.

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I use DV Resolve on an M1 MacBook Pro running Sonoma and iDVD is on my old MacBook Pro still running Mavericks.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 14.7

Posted on Nov 14, 2024 5:12 PM

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Answer 1

MacBraveheart Author

Level 1

135 points

Nov 18, 2024 3:20 AM in response to MacBraveheart

After much trial and error, testing Roxio Toast 20 Pro, Wondershare DVD Creator, and DVD Maker Lite, I went with DVD Styler.

Roxio Toast 20 Pro was potentially the best (also the most expensive), but their technical/customer support is non-existent and I got a refund within a couple of minutes after spending about a week trying to get support to address the bugs I had found without avail. And, believe me- I tried and better tried. I even had another video maker take a stab at addressing the issues with me and their technical support. Sadly (I do not like failing), I had to give up. In closing- the near instant refund told me everything I needed to know.

Wondershare DVD Creator was a non-starter. The DVD I was able to lay out sadly looked too amateurish for my needs.

DVD Maker Lite- ditto. Fortunately I trialed it.

DVD Styler (free) was the unexpected winner. It may not be the most intuitive, but then I wasn't looking for simple or intuitive- I was looking for capable and as close to iDVD as possible to please my sense of aesthetics. Being able to design it all myself and so easily was worth the fact that my Mac had an absolute melt-down at the potential for viral attack.

I was sceptical (how good and safe can something free be, right?), but I got it on the suggestion of a delightful chap on YouTube who paints and spent half an hour explaining in some detail how he uses it (video link, in case it helps anyone else: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlHE4-BhRWI) both slowly and with the knowledge that we are not all IT whiz kids. His evident delight with the product told me that it was worth a punt. So glad I found him.

I was actually really impressed with-

1. its ability to reconfigure navigation without my input (I had 12 chapters and was moving them around on the screen without attention to order, and yet it all works as intended despite the "buttons" being in rather random orders),
2. the fact that it offers me the option to set the DVD to match the PAL/NTSC source video, and-
3. complete control over background image resizing.

I look forward to exploring it more and get rid of the round corners on the chapter highlights and even just have chapter text links, but- for now? I am more than happy with the results.

Tip: do save often. It is unpredictable on bigger projects and doesn't like too many shortcuts (I am fortunately old school and don't use the F keys all that much).

Tip 2: the left menu (where the templates, backgrounds, and buttons are sourced) disappears at some point so make sure that you avail yourself of these early on.

As for the now removed answer- iDVD absolutely still has its place and I wont be removing it from my old Mac, no. :)

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