7 Best DVD Creators for Mac (Top Picks Compared)

I researched plenty of popular commercial and free apps to make DVDs on Mac, and wrote reviews based on users’ comments, as well as my personal hands-on experience through testing numerous DVD maker apps one by one. In this article, I will show you a useful and comprehensive review of the best DVD creator for Mac. Move on to check their pros and cons in detail.

 

The Comparison

 

Top 7 Best DVD Creators for Mac

There are lots of options to create DVD from videos on Mac, like Apple software iMovie and iDVD. Unfortunately, they no longer support making DVDs since OS X 10.7 Lion. This part will introduce the best DVD creator for Mac to you.

#1 Cisdem DVD Burner

Size: 109MB

System supported: Mac with Apple silicon; macOS 10.15+

Our take: Cost-efficient, user-friendly cross-platform DVD creation software that creates playable and high quality DVDs with menu, chapter and subtitle, even for beginners.

Rating:

Main features:

• Batch load video files of any format into the software
• Can play the target sources in the app before DVD creation
• Edit video with a bunch of features: trim, crop, rotate, add subtitle/chapter/watermark, apply special effects, increase or decrease volume
• Make a DVD menu with free templates, music, family photo, text, and other widgets
• Preview the whole DVD content before DVD creation & authoring,
• Allow output presetting, such as aspect ratio, TV standard, and playback modes including looping modes
• Quickly convert multiple copies of the same disc
• Auto compress large video files to burn on Mac
• High-quality DVD making results

Free Download

Cisdem DVD Creator stands firmly as the top choice to make videos to DVD on Mac, because of its intuitive, powerful features, and less cost.

The app supports creating DVDs from any video source, including videos downloaded from websites, transferred from portable devices or older tapes like VHS, recorded from Mac, and so on. There is a range of non-linear editing options for you to edit the added videos and yield professional results.

It also provide various fancy DVD menu templates for people to choose to make an exquisite DVD. Besides the preset templates, you can also create a DVD menu manually by customizing the elements and gadgets like button, borders, text, etc. inside the menu. Plus, you can upload a new background image, or just set the color to the background. You can also import a background song in any audio format such as MP3, WAV, M4A, etc. If you don’t want the DVD menu, simply tick the no menu option.

This best DVD maker for Mac supports an array of output DVD types including DVD-9, DVD-5, DVD±R/RW, DVD±R DL, DVD-RAM, DVD folder, and ISO file. What makes it more special is that it specially provides 4 playback modes according to people’s habits, including looping mode. All in all, it is a simple yet powerful for people to use, even the novices can get started easily in seconds.

Free Download

2 Roxio Toast 20 Pro

Size: 1GB

System supported: macOS 10.14 (64-bit) or above

Our take: Creating pro-level DVDs from music, video, photo, and data files both on Mac and Windows. Will reduce output DVD quality.

Rating: 

Main features:

• Burn music, data with menus, and titles
• Copy dual-layer DVD-Video discs
• Support basic editing features to the added files or DVD menus
• Convert video for iPad, iPhone, video game console, and more
• Support video and audio capturing on the device

Toast 20 Pro is a full suite for video conversion, raw photo editing, screen recorder and DVD making on Mac. It has a mixed bag of features for you to process your videos and DVDs, and it archives the different functions to specific sections, offering a straightforward interface for users to make tasks easily by moving to the corresponding section. Moreover, it allows you to pin the common-used function to the home page and rearrange the order by dragging the icon simply.

It's an upgraded version of the Toast 19 Pro with new features like template designer for choosing from 100+ disc menu templates, audio tag editing, painter essentials 8 and WinZip 9. It contains lots of options for burning video and audio projects, as well as editing them before doing so. But the resulting quality can’t get maintained at the same level as the original files. It may also suffer from some stability issues.

Personally speaking, the DVD menu templates it provided are a little bit ugly. Although it provides customization features for people to create DVD menu, it is complicated for novices in some extent. So if you are sophisticated in software and have free budget, this DVD creator will be a great option.

Note: Roxio keeps updating its software. You can purchase the older versions from Amazon.

#3 Leawo DVD Creator

Size: 253MB

System supported: macOS 10.13 or higher

Our take: Affordable DVD maker that covers the basics and includes a built-in photo slideshow tool.

Rating:

Main features:

• Support 180+ input video formats
• Create DVDs as discs, folders, or ISO files
• Show you 40+ DVD menu templates including online downloads
• Support editing features like chapter creation and speed adjustment
• Create photo slideshow DVDs with background music

Leawo DVD Creator is one of the modules inside Leawo Prof. Media for creating DVDs. It offer built-in, online, and custom menu options, with support for subtitles and background music added. In its editor, you can enhance video & audio, trim, watermark, create chapters, and more. Then preview all changes. Also, you can adjust video bitrate from 2-9 Mbps or use the "Fit to Disc" auto mode.

Leawo lives inside a 10-in-1 suite, but all other modules like DVD ripping, DVD copying, Blu-ray Creator, and Video Converter are separate paid modules, not part of the DVD Creator license. The full version comes at a high price.

#4 VideoByte DVD Creator

Size: 4.5MB

System supported: Mac OS X 10.11 or higher

Our take: Lightweight DVD creator that can add multiple audio and subtitle tracks.

Rating:

Main features:

• 6 menu template categories (Animal, Scenery, Festival, Plant, City, Other)
• Frame, Button, and Text libraries for finer menu editing
• Built-in video, audio track, and subtitle track editor
• Allow choose "Recommended" or "Max" writing speed

VideoByte DVD Creator gives you more control with 4 menu editing sections: Menu, Frame, Button, and Text. You can adjust thumbnail frames, replace menu buttons, and customize title styles individually. Its template categories are also designed mainly for personal projects.

Beside menu design, VideoByte also provides some standard DVD creation tools, including video trimming and cropping, color adjustments, watermarks, subtitle support, and DVD/ISO output options.

The trial output includes a watermark, totally 3 burns, and the trial expires after 10 days, making it hard to fully test the final DVD quality before purchasing. And note that Blu-ray authoring is available only on Windows version.

#5 DVDStyler

Size: 74.6MB

System supported: Mac OS X 10.15 Catalina or greater

Our take: Free and cross platform DVD creator that offers creative DVD menu, but crashes accidentally.

Rating:

Main features:

• Make DVD from video, create a photo slideshow
• The ready DVD menu for you to choose
• Put buttons, text, ellipse, frame, rectangle, etc. anywhere on your menu screen
• In-depth adjustment of the properties of each element in the menu
• Import image file for background option

DVDStyler is an open-source DVD creator for Mac that enables you to import AVI, MOV, MP4, MPEG, WMV, etc. videos. You can use it to make video files to DVD for playback on any standalone DVD player, but also create photo slideshow.

It provides selectable bitrates from 2MBit/s - 8MBit/s. You can also set the bitrate to automatic mode or specify a custom value. When the video bit rate is 4.5 MBit/s, a 4.7GB DVD can store up to 126 minutes of video. Plus, you can choose and preset the DVD PAL or NTSC from different resolution.

DVDStyler is a good free DVD authoring software for Mac, which provides many DVD menu modes. Besides, it allows you to change the menu buttons, background images and more adjustment to create a DVD menu. What’s more, it provides many hidden features by right-clicking.

But, you can’t expect too professional quality works from it. Sometimes, the picture of the burning video is static or just moving green and gray pixels. The possible reasons for causing this may diverse, for example, the original video quality is not good enough, the burning file is too large or other technical reasons.

#6 Express Burn

Size: 17.2MB

System supported: Mac OS X 10.5 or above

Our take: Multi-functional DVD creator with support for over 20 yet old-fashioned menu templates, and automatic installation of additional free video editors.

Rating:

Main features:

• Write multiple disc types, like audio CDs, video discs, data discs, etc.
• Support a range of input formats, such as MP3, OGG, AVI, OGM, MP4, etc.
• Record video files to NTSC or PAL
• Generate and organize chapters on DVD and Blu-ray discs
• Create data DVDs as ISO/Joliet, Hybrid, or UDF

Express Burn is a reliable optical DVD creator for Mac. You can use it to copy DVDs except for protected commercial DVDs and turn audio/ video/data into DVDs.

To edit videos with it, you need to initiate the VideoPad program. Its non-commercial home version can be opened in Express Burn and installed straightly on the Mac. VideoPad is a bit similar to iMovie, which is difficult for beginners, but not as professional as iMovie.

Express Burn makes it quite simple to build a DVD disc if you don't need to edit the video and DVD menu. Just drag homemade videos into the program and start to burn. As for DVD menu, it offers 20+ DVD menu templates to modify the DVD. 

2 out of 10 tests with the new version ran into the problem. This DVD maker was unable to create dual-layer DVDs, ejecting 20% when processing big files during the finalization stage, with nothing written to the disc.

#7 Burn

Size: 62.1MB

System Supported: Mac OS X 10.9+

Our take: Totally free DVD creator for Mac that helps make looping DVD and CD.

Rating:

Main features:

• Burn multiple files to disc, like data, audio, and video
• Duplicate DVD disc and image
• Make simple menus for DVDs
• Preset the output parameter according to different files, and make a better DVD

Burn is also an open-source app to make data, audio, video, and copy discs. It is an uncluttered, easy-to-use DVD creator for Mac. You can do some presetting before starting the DVD creation process, and do simple DVD menu making, so that you can create your personalized DVD-Video discs using themes.

If you want to put your large video files over 2 hours into DVD 5, you can pick the "DivX" output option for compressing the video to a smaller size for the DVD. But not all DVD players will play DivX DVDs. And the quality of the video will drop significantly if the video gets encoded.

Note: no matter what format of the video that you add to the program is, even MPG video file, it always asks you to convert the added file to MPG format before creating DVD.

 

FAQs

1. What is the best free DVD creator for Mac with no watermark?

Based on my personal experience, DVDStyler is the best free one, which can not only make a CD or DVD disc without watermark for free, but also offers some editing features that provided by those paid DVD authoring software Mac, such as DVD menus, subtitles, audio tracks and more.

2. Can I create DVD with VLC or HandBrake?

No, neither of them is a DVD maker for Mac.

If you have video in DVD format and standard DVD resolution, VLC will be able to convert it to an ISO image with the help of a plugin called Hive.

HandBrake is a transcoder to convert any video format and DVD to MP4 and MKV. It can also remove DRM from DVD if you install libdvdcss.

3. Can I create a playable DVD on Mac without installing any tool?

Finder, the default file manager on all Mac systems, can free you from installing third-party programs. It offers an extra function in making CD and DVD discs, which is easy to use for everyone by inserting a blank disc, putting the files to a folder and then clicking “Burn” button to start the task. However, it can only support creating data DVDs.

 

Buy Advice and Conclusion

Among the reviews of the 7 best DVD creation software for Mac, Cisdem DVD Burner provides the best balance of value and performance. It is an intuitive way to create DVDs on Mac with reliable output quality. The excellent video editing tools and customizable DVD menu features are its bonus points.

Some users may not take Toast 20 Pro into consideration because it is much more expensive and comes with a full suite of media functions, many of which may not be needed for DVD creation. Moreover, it takes up more hard drive space (around 1GB), which may not be ideal for Mac users with limited storage.

Leawo DVD Creator and VideoByte DVD Creator offer more DVD authoring features. However, their trial limitations, pricing models, or platform differences may not suit every user. Express Burn is an easy-to-use tool, but it still has room for improvement in terms of menu customization and overall DVD creation experience.

The reason why I put the 2 free Mac DVD creators on the list is that they can meet the basic DVD burning requirements without paying. Free tools usually come with limitations. For example, DVDStyler has poor compatibility with the latest versions of macOS.

In all, the main factors I considered during my reviews are the overall value of features, including output quality, DVD creation speed, bonus features like video editing and menu customization, affordable pricing, and quick and reliable customer support.