Q: burn a DVD without IDVD

If a data DVD use Disk Utility.

If a Video DVD, and you have a new Mac, look here:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3673

Give BURN a try, it's FREE, download it at the following link...

http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html

... Make sure to download the 64-bit version.

There really isn't a 3rd party DVD authoring application for Macs that can hold a candle to iDVD.  You can purchase iDVD (and the discontinued iWeb) by purchasing a copy of the boxed iLife 11 disk from one of the 3rd party retailers like Amazon.com: iLife 11. It's well worth the price IMO.

OT

dsimagry wrote:

 

Give BURN a try, it's FREE, download it at the following link...

 

http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html

 

 

... Make sure to download the 64-bit version.

For later finders of this post, here is a guide for the app BURN. http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/easily_burn_movies_to_a_dvd_without_apples_idvd. html

For later finders of this post, here is a guide for the app BURN

I have BURN, and it does indeed "work".  Having said that, iDVD remains of vastly superior.  With iDVD you can easily make DVDs look as good as Hollywood.

But it takes absolutely forever to burn anything I find. Burn on the other hand is quick and simple, if you're prepared to sacrifice a little on quality.

@ Ziatron and fjwhiston

Both just encode and do not let the user pick the bitrate etc. right? I thought however that BURN uses a more up to date opensource ffmpeg encoder while iDVD7 is from 2012(?). I don't know, if BURN uses the ffmpeg opensource encoder, though. Just an asssumption.

So, since you both say the picture quality is different, that lets me assume maybe BURN picks a lower bitrate and other not so well settings, right?

Do you know how iDVD7 compares to Toast 8 through 11 picture quality wise? (I mean one can either use "automatic" or just set video to 8Mbit/s and select half-pel and motion-estimation to be sure the most is taken out of the source file, I would think).

But it takes absolutely forever to burn anything I find.

Using iDVD, I can encode a two-hour movie in about one hour and 10 minutes. I then use Apple's disk utilities to burn the disk image which takes about five minutes.

Found this helpful as well How to create a video-DVD? (Macs without iDVD)