Max DVD Author (formerly Max Movie Maker)

Max DVD Author provides you with a comprehensive DVD creation and burning application that comes with support for multiple input file formats, enabling you to quickly save your home videos to a DVD, SVCD or VCD.

Ease of use is one of the main advantages that this program comes with, as you are guided through all the necessary steps for creating your DVD, from selecting the input files to configuring the menu appearance and burning the disk.

The main interface is simple and well-organized, enabling you to choose one of the two available options, namely authoring or burning a DVD. The next step requires you to browse for the video files you want to include into the project. Common input formats are supported, such as AVI, MPG, WMV DIVX, MPEG, QuickTime, MPEG-4/H.264, MP4, RM/RMVB and ASF.

The application displays a list of the input files, together with detailed information about their location, video and audio frame rate and the total play time, as well as a small preview of the video. Thus, before proceeding to the actual format conversion process, you can review your selection and easily delete files or add new ones.

The input files are converted to the appropriate format and the program automatically generates the DVD menu and the chapter list. The only option for customizing the menu is the possibility to change the background picture.

Prior to burning, you are prompted to configure a few options, such as selecting the burn device, customizing the disc volume name or choosing the folder where the temporary files are stored. You can change the video aspect ratio (16:9 or 4:3 are the two available options) and the output disc frame rate type (NTSC or PAL DVD).

To conclude with, Max DVD Author enables you to create personalized DVDs, SVCDs or VCDs without a lot of hassle. However, the lack of menu customization options, support for subtitles or video editing capabilities is a rather major drawback, compared to other applications from its category.