Free Cross-Platform DVD Authoring Software: Bombono

Bombono is a cross-platform open source DVD authoring software that was originally written for the GNU/Linux platform according to its developer. I'll be using it under MS Windows 7 (just for a change :D) for this review. Although I can't really suggest it as a complete suite for DVD authoring for the true professionals but for everyday day simple DVD authoring ... Bombono is an excellent little tool.

Bombono is actually a collection of libraries and the GUI is written in the GTK+ toolkit and uses ffmpeg for encoding videos into the DVD MPEG format. From Muxing into the .Vob container format to importing files from HDD to directly from another DVD ... it is certainly a handy utility.

Main features...

*. Supports a huge list of multimedia containers & files types such as: .mkv, .avi, .mpg, wmv, xvid, divx, wmv/wma, .mp4, .ac3, .dts, etc thanks to the ffmpeg multimedia library.

*. Has a very simple GUI that's easy to understand.

*. Save projects.

*. Mux files.

*. Built in Bitrate calculator.

*. If you've imported a vob file then you can easily customize (copy/paste, etc) the chapters (you know the standard "Timeline video viewer").

*. Add subtitles manually.

*. Define what happens after a file is played ("End Action"), whether it should automatically forward to the next one or go to the menu, etc.

*. Change menu Font size and Bold/Italic (but I couldn't change their colors though).

*. Add a motion Menu and manual background audio playback.

*. Change menu background.

*. Change Subpicture colors such as Selected and Activated items colors.

*. Write as a DVD folder, as a disk image, burn directly to a disk or just render the video only.

*. Change between 3 standard DVD sizes: 1.3/4.3 and 7.9 GB.

*. Progress-bar (while authoring the video) and an advanced/detailed output ... are among the main features.

Other than crashing while trying to access its preferences window, Bombono worked quite nicely in my Windows 7 setup. Although since it cannot let you change the text colors (I searched everywhere dudes and couldn't find a way to do that, do you know how to do it!?) but when considered its features and usability it's really a great application for simple DVD authoring "jobs" but I don't think it'll be able to replace your more powerful professional (paid one most probably) utility though.

So as final verdict, it certainly has some room for improvements but if you have simple needs and looking for simple DVD authoring software, then why not give it a try!. Click here for Bombono home page.