I\'m looking for a no-cost (or very low cost) DVD authoring tool for Windows. I\

Question

I'm looking for a no-cost (or very low cost) DVD authoring tool for Windows.

I've already got video that I shot and edited myself with another piece of software, and I've encoded it correctly for DVD. I'm looking for a tool that will allow me to import videos, as well as some still photos, and create a menu screen that will allow me to choose to between videos or slideshows to play. I'd like to be able to create submenus, so that a menu choice will go to a screen with more choices.

This tool doesn't need to actually burn the DVD, but I'd like it to output a VIDEO_TS folder that I can use with another tool (such as CDBurnerXP) to actually burn the disc.

I've used Sony DVD Architect in the past to do this, which does everything I need it to do, except that this time I am looking for a much less expensive solution. Windows DVD Maker, included with Windows, is too limiting: I am unable to create nested submenu screens, and I am unable to customize slideshows enough for my liking.

Features needed:

Create custom menu screens, with custom still backgrounds
Create submenu screens
Include multiple videos on one disc
Create customizable slideshows from a collection of still photos
No watermarking or ads added to the output

I mentioned that I've used Sony DVD Architect in the past; that was DVD Architect Pro that is bundled with the Sony Vegas Pro video editor and lists for $600 USD. I see now that Sony offers a consumer product called Sony DVD Architect Studio for $40, and from what I can tell, this will do what I need it to do, although it is not the free solution I was hoping for. I would still like to learn about recommendations for less expensive options.

Explanation / Answer

Free trial (can't recall if it has watermark during the trial), however it is not horribly expensive (well as software goes - ~$50).

It does not have a photo slideshow feature - the same company has a different product that does that.

Menu and submenus can be created with custom backgrounds. beyond background and text styling the amount of customization is a little bit limited but hopefully enough for your needs.

Other than those three caveats it matches your requirements very well.

I've found it very effective and quite fast at least on Windows vista/7/8 laptops with ~2-4gb of RAM. If you set it to maximum speed it will take a lot of the system's resources but that's what you'd expect.

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