Suppose your Mac computer stores an amazing number of home movies, and they occupy too much space. You have to consider a way that has the best of both worlds, both to keep your videos and to clear up Mac's room. Why not burn DVD on MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or iMac? In this article, we conducted an in-depth study on how to burn a playable DVD on Mac.
A playable DVD should be in DVD-VIDEO format, which contains an empty AUDIO_TS folder and a VIDEO_TS folder with VOB, BUP, IFO files.
Video DVD is playable on a DVD player. It has menus and chapters to help you quickly navigate through the contents of the disc. Commercial and rental DVDs distributed by Disney, Hollywood, Lionsgate, etc. are video DVDs.
But data DVD is not a playable DVD. Most brands of DVD players such as Magnavox, Philips, JVC, LG can’t recognize data DVD. It’s more like a hard drive or a USB stick, used to store media files, photos, installation packages, and more.
There are 3 DVD burning materials you should prepare.
Cisdem DVD Burner is a reliable tool to burn DVD for DVD player on Mac with simple steps and retain high quality. It supports 300+ video formats, capable of writing multiple videos in different formats to MPEG2/AC3 DVD.
Also, the video type is also unrestricted. It can easily burn playable DVDs with videos from YouTube, iTunes, iMovie, camera, mobile phone, VHS/VCR tapes, or anywhere.
Actually, Cisdem DVD Burner comes with more practical features that will assist you to edit videos, split a video into chapters, create a looping DVD, and burn to many copies. When making a DVD menu, you can choose a beautiful template model or DIY it yourself.
Drag-n-drop your video files from a local folder to Cisdem DVD Burner.
Click under the video thumbnail to open the Editing Window, and start to beautify video with Crop, Effects, Rotate, Subtitle (embedded or external), Volume, etc.
See the "Menu" tab at the top, press it, and switch to DVD Menu Window. Attach template, title, text, external track, your own image, etc. to the menu.
Check all details of your projects prior to final burning by clicking .
Press to go to the Burning Window. After output parameter settings are completed, insert a writable or recordable DVD, and then click "Burn" to begin the fast-burning journey.
What I want to introduce here is iDVD, the old technology. Even though Apple has phased it out, I'm sure there are still people using OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or earlier.
It is not applicable to macOS Catalina and later OS that does not support running 32-bit apps. For OS X 10.7 Lion to macOS 10.14 Mojave owners, iDVD is available, but requires the purchase of an iLife Suite '09 or '11 disc from Amazon. After that, get the latest iDVD 7.1.2 update on Apple's Support Downloads website.
If you are using Mojave or before system, you can still install iDVD, but the DVD produced by it is not playable on some well-known DVD players.
DVDStyler is a decent alternative to iDVD for users who update to the new OS, including macOS 14 Sonoma. It has the ability to burn DVD for DVD player on Mac and design your own interactive DVD menu. However, its background and button templates are too obsolete to fit younger. And it often fails to burn playable DVDs due to the big videos you import, even if the capacity bar clearly indicates that there is enough space.
Writing a video DVD using the command line is very complicated. It’s only suitable for programmers or people who are good at code compilation. There is no command line utility to burn video directly to DVD, you have to produce an ISO image first and then create ISO from DVD. Install the following toolboxes on your Mac:
Install Homebrew first, then install the tools above with the commands brew install ffmpeg, brew install dvdauthor, and brew install mkisofs. Or drag the paths to these tools directly into Terminal to use them without installing.
There are indeed online converters such as Files-conversion.com and Zamzar.com that provide the option of "Convert to DVD". But they actually convert the video to VOB and don't burn your file into the entire DVD structure. VOB is just a video file, not a video DVD.
Mac’s built-in program – Finder and iTunes (Apple Music app) make it possible to burn a data DVD for free. Let's see how they work.
iTunes is not limited in its duty of media player, media library, online radio broadcaster, and mobile device management, but it can burn DVD with simple requirements.
Note: iTunes doesn’t allow you to burn data DVD on Mac with:
If there is a built-in SuperDrive, you can easily play a DVD on Mac. Just place your disc into SuperDrive, and the DVD player app will start playing the DVD automatically. According to the default DVD player controls, you can freely switch DVD videos and chapters, fast forward, and rewind.
Even without a SuperDrive, your external DVD writer can also read the DVD or you can try Apple's Remote Disc feature.
The standard format for a DVD is MPEG-2/H.262. When your DVD is in MPEG-4/H.264 format, commonly known as Blu-Ray, you can't watch it in a general DVD player but in a Blu-ray specific drive and player.
That’s all for how to burn a playable DVD on Mac. You should find a program with the ability to burn video DVDs for the DVD player and keep the DVD-VIDEO structure. Although a free DVD burner for Mac doesn’t cost a penny, most of them lack some video polishing and beauty features. Because of its simplicity, you can't make more advanced customization, and you can't throw whatever formats videos into it as you like. Commercial apps like Cisdem DVD Burner do not have these concerns.
Megan has an impressive deal of experience with Mac software and has the ability to explain tech stuff in a simplified, straightforward and easy to understand way.