This may be a stupid question, but I've never burned DVD's before.

Do I need a specific program to burn DVD's? Or do most movie editors come with it? I know Pinnacle Studio 7 (barf) doesn't have a DVD burning option, so does that mean I need a seperate DVD bruning program and import the movie to there?

what is a good (and cheap) program to get?

I was in the same situation as you not too long ago, and found it a huge pain in the *** burning dvds.

All the programs that people recommended to me to use were too complicated and/or i didnt want to use 4 different programs just to get to a dvd.

What i do now is if i dont need to edit, i just use Pinnacle Studio 9. Capture, render and burn to dvd.
If i need to edit anything, i use Vegas 5 and Pinnacle Studio 9. Eventually i will be using DVD Architect to burn, but at the moment Im having trouble with it, so for now at least Sudio 9 burns all my discs.
Im sure other people will be recommending other programs that do a better job, but for me i found this way the easiest for now.

BTW, i dont use any menus/titles yet. I havent dont anything where it is absolutely nescessary yet, thats why this method is cool for me. Ill have to get the grip of DVD Architect to do menus.
What program do you guys think is the easiest in terms of authoring/adding menus/text and burning to dvd?

There's the difference. I want to be able to burn Menus.

I know idvd for mac can do menues and stuff, but I hear that sometimes it will screw up the burning process.

As for me, I've got Adobe Encore. It's a very professional program, but very easy. You can make menu's in Photoshop, and put all of the menu's in your project, link the titles to your desired file, add subtitles optional, audio tracks is optional, etc. Pretty easy to use. Just install it, read the manual for half an hour and you'll be able to make great and excellent DVD's in a minute.

grtz gotan

Agreed with Gotan. If you are on PC Encore isnt a bad idea - but it can be a little buggy. 1.5 is definitely an improvement.

Burning DVD's to me a very simple process. Usually the editing program gives you the option to burn to DVD and takes care of the process. All you have to do is stick a DVD into the drive, so I'm not sure what part you are talking about that is so complicated.

How much should I spend on Encore?
And can you make a background video for the DVD menu with it?
Lama: I want to make Bad-Ace menues and stuff.
And my editing system doesn't have a DVD burning option . So I need a program that will make awesome menues and burn without bugging the DVD.

Ah yes, burning DVD's... I still don't like to do it. But the program that I have been working with lately is DVDit. It's a PC complient program and it seems to do the trick. As far as I know it is cheap. You can make menus, chapter selections, etc. etc.

When I feel the need to burn something ultra creative, and maybe send away to be burnt to say... 600 discs, sure I'll buy a good burning software! D'uh.


But for now, iDVD works perfectly. My only complaint is, is that you cannot create your own menus for it, and have to deal with their pre-created files.
Which isn't that bad, really. Unless I want to impress other Mac users... but that's okay, since there are like, maybe 6 users of OSX in my city of 20,000. Sad, really. What I mean is, very few people other than me will know that I've cheated using pre made Apple menu's...