Tipard DVD Creator was on GOTD this week, so I wanted to post something about creating DVD & Blu-ray video discs in case anyone was interested. At the pro level, creating discs comparable to what you buy retail is surprisingly complicated. Not saying anything bad about the Tipard app, using it or comparable software you can put video on a disc, but not much more than that.
The market for DVD & Blu-ray authoring software has shrunken as fewer & fewer people create DVD & Blu-ray video discs. You can still do it, and on a budget, but you have fewer choices, and might have to use multiple apps, researching & learning each one. The biggest *potential* roadblock is making sure your DVD &/or Blu-ray player can play the video you want to use. The DVD & Blu-ray video specs are quite specific, but players can vary in how strictly they adhere to them. *Usually* if the video encoding software lists DVD &/or Blu-ray compliant video, using that template will work, but there's another potential gotcha -- a Lot of software that can author DVD &/or Blu-ray video discs will not accept ANY video that wasn't encoded using that app itself. Problem is, the video encoder built into those apps is too often sub-par. And finally, if you're doing something like say a church project where you'll have discs produced commercially, those facilities use their own software to check that your work complies with the official spec -- even if your software promised full compliance, your stuff may or may not pass muster.
That said, all video DVDs use mpg2 video with specific requirements for the encoder settings, and capable video encoders are not hard to find. Problem there is that you want VBR [Variable Bit Rate] video like retail DVDs use, & quality encoders that do mpg2 VBR are a bit more rare. VBR uses a lower bit rate for quiet scenes without lots of motion &/or detail, and higher bit rates for scenes that need it. The lower the bit rate, the smaller the video file, and using VBR gives you the best quality that will fit on a DVD disc. Blu-ray video discs can use a few video formats, including the same mpg2 as DVDs [and in fact you can use DVD discs], but the vast majority use H.264. Where it might get confusing however is that there's Blu-ray and the more or less identical AVCHD. Unless you're having discs produced commercially, you can normally use either or.
Audio is Much easier, though remember to wait to encode your audio until you've finished any and all editing. If/when your audio is stored as a .wav or .w64 file you can slice it and dice it nice and precise, but DVD/Blu-ray encoding uses packets which don't cooperate nearly as well. Subtitles can be hard... Both disc types use images -- not text -- that are overlaid on the video frames, and they must be somewhat accurately timed, which can be harder with H.264 video, which by its nature can shift a small bit forward or back [be careful].
If want more than whatever templates your authoring app provides, menus can get hard -- very hard. DVD video is stored in VOB files, with a sort of register-based scripting stored in VTS files. Your menus are video files while the buttons and separate highlights are overlaid like subtitles. Blu-ray has a more complicated folder structure that thankfully you usually don't have to mess with -- your authoring app will handle that. And Blu-ray's backward compatibility extends to DVD-type menus -- consumer grade authoring apps use the same processes & tools you use to create DVD menus. On retail Blu-ray video discs, menus and special features are all handled by JAVA code written for that disc. There are tools to get you closer to that, or mimic somewhat similar effects, but using JAVA is generally beyond your reach. If you don't want to bother with Blu-ray menus, tsMuxeR may be the best way to go... give it the files you've prepared elsewhere and it'll copy them to a compliant Blu-ray folder structure ready to burn or play.
I cannot attest to the accuracy of every statement/thread -- you will find stuff that's wrong -- but nonetheless you might find something here helpful:
forum.videohelp[.]com/forums/31-Authoring-%28DVD%29?s=a89e0b25ce26a794fb311d1ed90b0feb
forum.videohelp[.]com/forums/46-Authoring-%28Blu-ray%29?s=a89e0b25ce26a794fb311d1ed90b0feb