After upgrading a Windows 7 computer to Windows 8.1, I discovered that Windows 8.1 Movie Maker does NOT offer the ability to burn movies to DVDs. Yes, it was there for Windows 7, but removed in Windows 8.1. Bummer!
If you need a FREE solution, the one I have been using successfully is called DVDStyler.
Quick steps:
- First, use Movie Maker to create your content. When finished, select to save it to your disk, creating a WMV file.
- You may wish to review the online instructions for creating a DVD with DVD Styler.
- Startup DVD Styler. Here are some simple steps for creating your first DVD:
- The Welcome screen let’s you define a new project. The three things I do on this page are:
- Change the wording in the “Disc label” field
- Set video format to NTSC
- Set aspect ration to 16:9
- Click OK
- Next you can select a template
- Change the wording in the “Caption” field
- Let’s use the default template, so click OK
- Now we can customize the DVD and drop in your video file
- Right click on “Disc Title”, select Properties, then change the text as desired
- Along the left border, you will see vertical tabs for ‘’”File browser”, “Backgrounds” and “Buttons”
- Click on “File browser” and a File Explorer frame will open. Browse to locate your video file.
- Simply drag your video file down to the bottom of your screen where you see the message “Drag your video files from the File Browser to here”
- And finally, let’s burn the DVD
- Insert a writeable DVD in your drive
- Click on File –> Burn DVD
- If you have more than one DVD drive on your computer, be sure that the correct DVD drive is selected
- Sit back and wait until you get the message that the burn was successful.
- Click the “Close” button, and pop out the DVD
- Multiple copies?
- If you wish to burn multiple DVDs, simply repeat the instructions in Step 7 above.
- Fortunately, burning the additional DVDs won’t take as long as the first one, as it has already created the temporary DVD output files required.
