Ewald wanted to be able to create DVDs from the Quicktime movies exported by his digital camera. As a result of being away from my familiar Linux tools, I had to find something that´d work on Windows XP.

First, I tried MediaCoder, a Windows front-end (done in XUL) for mencoder, ffmpeg and more of these familiar tools. It was flexible enough, but quite awkward from an end-user perspective and also frustrating if you’re used to calling the supporting commands directly from the CLI.

Luckily, I stumbled upon ConvertXtoDVD, a commercial Windows-only program which proved to be very user-friendly and intuitive without requiring the user to understand the ins and outs of each an every supported media format.

At 40 euro it’s a bit expensive if, like me, you’re used to staying at the free software side of things, but I’d daresay it’s actually worth the money if you’re not an obsessive geek with obscene amounts of free time on his hands.