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I got married to my high school sweetheart last fall. It was a long romance, it had its ups and downs, but in the end, we realized that we made each other happy, and that's what matters most in the world.
When we sat down for our wedding planning, the first thing that both of us agreed on was that we both wanted a quiet, small wedding with just close family and friends. We didn't want to make a big bash out of it, and we were both in agreement that wherever we cut, our expenses would go into a common fund that would help build our future together.
But when you really get down to it, there's not much that you can cut out in a wedding, can you? One of the few things that we decided we could do without was hiring a professional wedding videographer.
Did you know that those guys cost anywhere between $1000 to $2500? We felt we could ask a few friends to stand in strategic places and make videos for us, which we could then put together later to create a wedding video.
But there was one catch: was there software that could help us put together all these videos in multiple formats and combine them to make a wedding DVD? That's when I came across the concept of DVD creators. It was the perfect solution to our problem, and saved us a whole lot of money!
The DVD format is different from other formats like MP4, MKV, AVI, FLV, etc. The DVD format is known as VOB.
If you open a DVD in a normal Windows folder, you will notice that there is no single file on there. Instead, there are two folders: Video_TS and Audio_TS. Both folders have files related to (you guessed it) the video part and the audio part.
Let's say you have an MKV file shot on a regular Android phone. You can't burn MKV to DVDs directly. You have to first convert .MKV to DVD, and that's where DVD Creators come in. They can take your MKV files, sort and edit them, add things like subtitles and menu options and create a perfect DVD for you.
If you want to convert MKV to DVD, you have to first run it through a DVD converter, and then only you can burn MKV to DVD so that the disc can understand the files written and play it back when you need them.
Secondly, DVDs can have customized menus and sections in them, which you can click to go to the specific segment you want to watch.
Those functionalities are not available in normal video files; you have to first convert .MKV to DVD compatible video and then add the custom options to finalize the DVD; otherwise, regular DVD players cannot read and play it.
DVDFab has one of the best products out there in the market, and it was the one that I actually used for our wedding DVD as well. Some of its key features are:
Did you know that there are more than 200 formats of video files out there? It's not only about converting MKV to DVD; there are myriad formats like MP4, FLV, Xvid, TS, M2TS, and many times when you are making a video out of videos shot from different phones, you end up having to deal with all these formats.
DVDFab DVD Creator was able to convert all these files to DVD format successfully, without a single hitch.
The process of making a wedding DVD takes many iterations. I had to make edits, change some of the voiceovers, and include some older videos as an introduction. I needed a way for me to be able to make a soft copy of the DVD, which I could show to my relatives and, of course, my better half, so that I could get feedback to make corrections.
DVDFab was right on the job since I could easily convert the video I was making into an ISO image which I could then keep on my computer and even my phone to show to people. It took almost a month before I actually burned the final file to a physical DVD.
Apart from ISO, DVDFab could handle many other formats like DVD-5, DVD-9, DVD±R/RW, and DVD±R DL.
After putting together many videos, I realized that we would be watching the final DVD on our home theater system, which I recently bought, so I needed the final output to be super high quality because otherwise, it would look grainy and blurred.
DVDFab helped put together all the videos in high quality, and the final product came out looking absolutely fabulous.
Some of the folks back home are not very comfortable with English. It was important to include subtitles, especially during the ceremony, so that they could understand our vows. DVDFab DVD Creator helped me add subtitles in my home language in the right parts of the video.
It also had some pretty slick-looking menu templates, which made my job of putting in a menu a lot easier. The templates were customizable, so I threw my wedding theme into the background, and it made the DVD even more special for the two of us.
Burning DVDs takes quite a bit of time, and my experience was that DVDFab was able to do the job a lot faster than other competitors. I learned later that they use something called GPU acceleration to make this happen on your computer.
The product is very reasonably priced. For a one-month access, you will be charged only $24.99, which was enough for my purpose. If you need the product for a professional purpose, you can get a yearly license for $46.99, and if you want to get lifetime access with free upgrades and as many uses as you want, you can get it for the low price of $74.99
The iSkySoft DVD Creator is another very good application that can do the job of making your MKV to DVD quickly and efficiently. Some of its key features:
You can use iSkySoft for converting many files formats to DVD format, including MOV, MP4, FLV, MKV, AVI, etc. Similarly, you can write DVDs in any format, be it DVD 9, BD-50, or BD-100.
If you want to crop, rotate, and trim your videos, then iSkySoft has an inbuilt video editor as well. It also lets you add subtitles and meta information to your videos, just like DVDFab.
For most home DVD creation products, a 1-month subscription model like DVDFab makes sense. This option is not available in the iSkySoft DVD creator., which was a bummer for me. Thankfully, I could get everything I wanted from the DVDFab product itself.
You can get a single PC lifetime access for $ 55.95. If you need a professional license for your family, you can get one for $89.95 (2-5 people) and $234.95 for Up to 10 desktops.
If you are looking for a completely free option and are sure that you only want to write MKV to DVD, then this is a good option. MKV files will be burnt to DVD without any watermarks, but if you try writing any other types of files with this software onto a DVD, there will be a big watermark on the right-hand corner.
For my purpose, this was unsatisfactory, so I didn't use this software much. The options in terms of audio files were also limited to only very specific formats such as MP3, WAV, WMA, MP2, OGG, AC3, Amr, and Au. The output format is limited to DVD and ISO.
This is a good software option for occasional use and only MKV files.
Well, now you know how I created my perfect wedding DVD by using DVD Creator software from DVDFab called DVDFab DVD Creator. Go ahead, try it on your own, and make perfect DVDs to enjoy with your family, friends, and that special someone!