Sometimes some software is just better on Windows because there isn’t a good alternative for Mac…yet. This is the case in this situation. There may be a better way that I have not found yet. If you know what that is leave a comment and I will update this page to show the best and cheapest way to burn .avi files to DVD.

So you have learned how to watch tv shows on your mac computer for free but you are looking for a way to burn those .avi files to dvd so that they can play in standalone dvd player. You would think Mac would be all over this, but after countless hours of searching for a solution to this problem I must say that I have needed to use Windows and Convert X to DVD. This is by far the easiest way to accomplish burning .avi files to dvd that results in top quality playback.

If you are burning these files so that you can watch them in your own home on your HDTV, I would recommend you learn how to hook your mac up to an HDTV in order to save some money and wasted DVD’s. For the cost of one batch of blank DVD’s you can watch anything from your computer on your television.

I have tried using Toast and I have tried using many other video file conversion software but I have not yet figured out how to this on the Mac side of things. I will continue to search for a way and then post an update once I have. In the meantime we need to solve your problem of making dvd’s out of .avi files.

How to Make a DVD from an .avi File

You will first need to run Windows on your Mac. There are several different types of software to do this. Some are free and some are not. I personally use Parallels (not free) but there is also Boot Camp (free), VMWare Fusion (not free), and Q (free). These programs only work for Intel Macs.

Once you have one of these emulators installed you must then install a copy of Windows using this software. I have found you need Windows XP to have a minimum of 15gb of disk space to burn the dvd’s properly. (You can see how the cost is adding up but you may have an old copy of Windows lying around from your pre-Mac era of computing).

Now that you have Windows set up and running on your Mac you will need to install Convert X to DVD which is a Windows program. Install it and launch it.

Now drag the .avi files you want to burn into your Windows so that it gets copied into your Windows Operating System. Once that is done all you have to do is drag those files yet again into the white area of Convert X to DVD.

There are other options to use in Convert X to DVD in terms of adding subtitle channels (if your .avi file came with subtitles which is a separate file with an .srt file extension), or adding menu titles and the number of items to be displayed on the menu. Once this is done press convert and insert your recordable dvd into your disk drive. Wait a few hours and you will have a perfect version of the .avi file you downloaded ready to bring over to your buddy’s house to watch or to give to someone as a gift.

Once that is done you can close Windows and pretend like the whole thing never happened. Now go have a shower.