Burning Professional DVDs in 2024

[Benjamin Hilton]

It's been years since I created a professional DVD. Recently though, we are seeing a resurgence in desire to own physical DVDs for content consumption. (a lot of people are getting sick of the streaming networks)That being said we decided to take the plunge and release a new documentary on both digital download and DVD on our online store. 

After some research, I realized the only legitimate way to create a DVD menu and such today are the old professional (but discontinued) software giants with either Adobe Encore, or Apple's DVD Studio Pro. Apparently the professional DVD companies still keep a fleet of old computers running the old software as there are no modern alternatives. 

So I thought I'd detail my process here in case anyone else in interested in doing this too, I might be able to help out with any questions if I've run up against the same issue. 

This is my process so far:
- Bought a Mac Mini on Ebay from 2008 for $50, it works surprisingly well. (unfortunately it was updated to OS Yosemite 

- Bought a copy of Snow Leopard on Ebay for $25, installed it on a partition with no issues

- Bought a copy of Final Cut Studio 2 on Ebay for $30 that was supposed to include the serial number

- Upon install I realized the serial number was hand written, and couldn't decipher it exactly even though I tried dozens of different combinations

- I bought a second copy of Final Cut Studio 2 on Ebay for $50. Upon install I realized that it was an upgrade copy, not an original as advertised. Therefore I couldn't install it since an upgrade requires you to have an original serial number. (I returned this copy and got a refund)

- With the printed serial number on the upgrade copy though, I was able to decipher the pattern of what a final cut serial number is supposed to look like. I was able to compare this to the hand written number from the original purchase and try a few more variations, it finally worked!

- After a lengthy install process, DVD Studio pro and Final Cut Pro run no problem on the old Mac Mini, very snappy performance

- I took my final video files and encoded them to MPEG 2 with Handbrake, Studio pro threw an error code on import, it said it couldn't recognize the file format

- I tried a bunch of combinations with hand brake, no luck. I also tried a bunch of combinations with Shutter Encoder, also no luck.  

- I tried encoding with Apple's old compressor software that was included with the Studio 2. That worked fine, just really long encoding time due to the old mac, and the quality wasn't nearly as good as Handbrake or Shutter. 

- I finally got gave Adobe Media Encoder 2025 a try, and that worked! The quality wasn't quite as good as Handbrake, but a lot better than Compressor. I was able to play around with encoding settings and sharpening to find a happy medium for a final output that looks pretty good, even for SD

- After that it was just a matter of building menu graphics in photoshop, importing and linking everything in DVD Studio Pro. It's surprisingly intuitive software to use, but very powerful at the same time. I'm about to burn my final DVD to send off to the duplicator, so fingers crossed everything continues to work.