Authoring DVD on MacOS High Sierra

[erikeriksson]

High Sierra 10.13.2 MacBook Pro early 2011 2.3 Ghz Intel Core i5

I want to author mkv files and avi etc using the above system. Which commercial programme is the best?

Thanks in advance for any help

[Cornucopia]

You don't have many options on a Mac, especially such a late model mac. You should still be able to use Adobe Encore (it's an older CS6 app, but is included in CS6 Premiere in download if you subscribe to Adobe CC and go looking for it). Roxio Toast Pro/Titatinium still has some features. DVDStyler is free/opensource and is fairly fundamental, but usable.
Old standbys like DVD Studio Pro and iDVD are no longer updated and not really supported any more.

In many ways, it makes sense to either dual boot or use a VM to run a dvd authoring app in Windows. ESPECIALLY, if you are needing Blu-ray, BD3D or 4kBD authoring, or full pro features. Then I'd use something like Scenarist, BluPrint, BluDiscStudio, etc.

Scott

[Case]

Unfortunately, the actual best have been discontinued: Adobe Encore, Apple DVD Studio Pro.
What properties would make a program “best” in your view? I.e. ‘many features’ might clash with ‘ease of use’.
Are you okay with template based or no menus? If you don’t care much for menus, then there are some excellent ffmpeg based options that pretty much handle any input with one click.
I’ve used Toast, Open DVD Producer, DVDStyler (watch out for bundleware), Burn, iFFmpeg (now ffWorks) that are still current.
There’s also quite a few in the Mac App Store, but I find it even harder to pick the gems from the glass there.
Namedropping of pro apps like Scenarist isn’t realistic towards Erik, when he says he is interested in converting his MKV and AVI collection.

[erikeriksson]

I use Titanium Toast 11 but it takes forever and has a nasty habit of effing off just before last 10 minutes of the film. I thought Tom Hanks made it in Philadelphia. Hates mkv. Might buy a second hand windows machine and use convertx2dvd.
Thanks for advice.

[Cornucopia]

When someon says "best" withOUT qualifying, I give them what I consider best. And for DVD authoring, Scenarist was and still is the gold standard that all others are measured against. Most compliant + most features.
And it wasn't intended to be name dropping.
[Namedropping mode ON] Of course, AFA Macs go, best probably was Sonic Solutions' DVDCreator (not to be confused with the current dvd creator which bears no resemblance other than the name & topic), but it became extinct by ~2002.
DVDStudioPro was good, but only because it was the mashup of other companies' good IP: Astarte's DVDirector/Pro and Spruce's DVDMaestro. Much like the rest of their lineup was bought out (FCP, Logic, Shake, Combustion...).
[ND mode OFF]
Since HighSierra has continued the major changes (for the worse) of recent Mac OS offerings, there is a good chance that most apps would have compatibility issues unless/until they're updated. Caveat emptor.

Scott

<edit: forgot the "withOUT">

[Case]

When someone says "best" with qualifying, I give them what I consider best.

I appreciate that. Perhaps I should have been clearer that the elaboration request for ‘best’ was aimed at Erik. Now I know that he’s looking for a faster and less error prone replacement for Toast 11. Toast 11’s encoder isn’t very good at utilizing multiple cores, or scaling, or speed, or sharpness. So that’s converting, not commenting the actual authoring.



One could mix-and-match for menu sake: convert to DVD-Video compliant streams outside Toast and only author without video encoding in Toast, and save time and gain quality.

Since HighSierra has continued the major changes (for the worse) of recent Mac OS offerings, there is a good chance that most apps would have compatibility issues unless/until they're updated. Caveat emptor.

I expect September 2018 will be the “big cleaning”, when the next version macOS will abandon all 32 bit apps. Some handy tools that haven’t changed in a decade and ‘miraculously’ still work now, will probably be lost then.

[Cornucopia]

Toast has ALWAYS been sluggish in that area.

I hear on good authority: MacOS will very soon be gone and subsumed into iOS, making all updated Macs just glorified iPads. Not very conducive for getting actual "work" done.

Scott

[erikeriksson]

Wow. That will cause chaos