DVD Burning

Can anyone recommend good quality dvd burning software? I'm willing to pay money for it. I've just upgraded my fcpx but it didn't help me with my problem - the dvds I burn will not show the menu first. It just plays it straight away even though I choose the option "show menu" before burning it. Must be a glitch.

I want to be able to customize my menu with a user-friendly burner. Any recommendations?

I like fcpx but I'm pretty disappointed with the dvd burning aspect. :S It's awful and I wonder how others feel about it?

Hi Liz,

DVD and BR sharing in FCPX is very basic at best, and I don't think this this will change anymore. They just added this in case someone needs to do a quick burn to a physical disc and that's it. If you want more control and menu choices for a DVD you can export your FCPX project as a master file and use a dedicated DVD authoring program to create the disc.

I must say the choices for good DVD authoring software are getting limited, both on Mac and Windows. Apple has discontinued DVDSP and iDVD and Adobe has recently declared Encore EOL, so it is clear that the end of physical discs is getting near.

But there still are some basic softwares that can help you out:

This is a free one: www.dvdstyler.org/en/

Then you have Roxio Toast, which does elementary DVD and Blu-Ray authoring and much, much more: www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/titanium/overview.html

And here's a longer list of simple DVD authoring softwares: alternativeto.net/software/idvd/?platform=mac

I haven't needed to burn a DVD for a long time anymore, so I have no experience with any of these. If there are trial versions available you might check them out first.

By the way:

I just tested burning a small FCPX project to a DVD disc image and when I play the DVD in my Mac's DVD player it does start with the menu. As I haven't found any other threads about this issue either my guess is there is something wrong on your side. You could try refreshing your FCPX preferences and see if this solves the issue.

I export the master file from FCPX, then bring that to iDVD to create a menu, scene selection, etc. Next, I export to a disc image (for some reason, I cannot burn directly to disc from iDVD). The disc image is then burned to disc with Roxio Toast Titanium. It works for my needs.

Thanks for your comprehensive feedback, Ronny!

Yes, they will phase dvd's out. The only reason I need to burn them is to show stuff at my school - their computers are pretty basic and don't play MP4 very well. I'm still yet to work out how to save a film as a .mov in fcpx. It doesn't give me an option to do that. Do you know how?

Cheers.

Thanks, Cinemaloha!

I used to have iDVD on my last Mac computer but they dropped that with the latest Mac they make. I'm not sure what their alternative is but I'm betting it costs money - crafty.

Cheers.

Oh, ignore that last statement I made. I've just got around to checking out your suggestions.

I'm sure I'll find something suitable. Thanks guys.

If you had iDVD on you older Mac it means you probably own iLife 11 disc, as iDVD is part of iLife 11. If so, you can then reinstall iDVD on your new Mac using the iLife 11 disc. See this thread giving a few tips about reinstalling iDVD on Lion or Mountain Lion.

discussions.apple.com/thread/4476669?start=0&tstart=0

Liz,

What do you mean that you can't export as a .mov? If you click the export button and choose Master File, doesn't it come out as a ProRes .mov-file?

Are you on the newest FCPX 10.0.9?

Thanks, Nirna. I'm not sure I own the iLife 11 disc but it's ok, I'm currently trialing some other software.

Toast 11.

+1 for Toast 11. Does that make it Toast 12?