How To: Make DVD Movie on Mac with iDVD from AVI File for Free

I was pretty surprised how easy it was to make a DVD movie on my Mac with iDVD. It only takes downloading and installing Perian which will give Quicktime the ability to render different video codecs. Here is a quick step by step guide on how I created a DVD.

First thing you will want to do is download Perian and install it. Click this link and then download the dmg. This will install extra codecs for Quicktime to play DIVX movies and other high compression codecs.

The Perian control panel is found in the Apple System Preferences menu. See the red arrow in the image to the left.

Once the Perian installation is complete, restart the computer and then open up iDVD from the applications menu.

When iDVD opens up select the Magic iDVD option highlighted by the red arrow.

Next select the movie, or movies, you would like to add to this dvd. The movies added will show up under the drop moves here section in the project. Once all your movies are in the project click the create project button as highlighted by the red arrow.

Once the project goes to the preview screen, all that is left is to insert a blank dvd and click burn dvd button as shown. I would recommend using the preview button to make sure the audio and video playback before burning the project. There is also an option to save the project as an image. In the file menu of iDVD there is an option Save as Disc Image. This creates a disc image which you can test on the computer before burning to DVD using the Disc Utility application from the Utilities folder.