Windows DVD Maker working under Windows 8/8.1, this is how to do it

This one took me ages to find a solution.. and here I want to share it with anyone interested. In fact this made me register here

This post lacks screenshots, forum does not allow me ..

Ok,Defintion first to those who not know :

DVD Maker is a program included in Windows 7 . This is NOT DATA-DVD-Option in Windows Explorer but a Application to author DVDs that will playback in any physical Player, with animated menus and buttons . Under Windows 7 it also plays nicely together with the "Live Movie Maker" as a post-processing option to produce DVDs straight from the WLM app. In Windows 8/.1 WLM shows no such option by default.



In Windows 8/.1 this particular application "DVD Maker" is no longer included;starting the exe from the copied Win7 folder will result in a message that no mpeg2 de/encoder is installed. No matter what you do even after registering all sort of Win7 codecs manually , this message will always be displayed and even after adding Windows Media Center which has DVD Playback support the program will not work.

Microsoft must have intentonally blocked this program to run at all , my guess is the hashes of the Win7 exe's are blacklisted somewhere deep in the system. Renaming DVDMaker.exe to something else.exe launches Windows Media Player setup, which is a double weired behaviour I have never seen this before.

Then a few days ago I thought of Windows Vista - because DVDMaker was also included in its Premium and Ultimate Editions as Part of the preinstalled Moviemaker 6.0 ( not the "Live" one of today ) and basically this DVDMker is exactly the same program like in Win7 - identical to say. I started my experiments again and et voila all of a sudden this one worked after registering the codecs like I ever did.. Now I wanted to know why DVDMaker.exe started from the Vista "Movie Maker" folder would do it but the same exe from Win7 folder "DVD Maker" would not . I dropped the exe from the Vista folder into the Win7 folder and again the annoying message of "No codes installed" came on. Until I renamed the second DVDMaker.exe to DVDMaker8.exe and left the other one under its DVDMaker.exe name in the same folder, then it worked also from the Windows7 folder. In fact the launched exe all of a sudden appears also in the Win7 look-n-Feel ( blue ) while launched from the other folder it comes in Vista-black ..



very strange, but it works and that what I was after.

So, long story short :
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I made a zip file from mine which has all stuff and commands included - language support depends on the installed Windows language packs from Win7 source. This has EN,DE,ITA,FRANCE :

Link removed, forum does not allow me to post URLs




Maybe someone more skilled could turn this into an full automated installer like the guy that made the Windows7 games for 8 ?

Manual Method : You need the DVD Maker or Movie Maker app directory :
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Legally you need at least Vista ( because you need that single exe out of it ) and for best results a Win7 license ( the wmv-codecs work best in Win8 , you do not want to lose mp4 playback which vista does not have ), DVDs or isos with the same architecture and language as your current Windows 8.x ( 32bit / 64bit )

You can extract the install.wim in the sources folder of these DVDs with 7zip, so extract "Program Files\DVD Maker" folder from Windows 7 Disc and "Program Files\Movie Maker" from the Vista Disc ( if you plan to use the Win7 version then you only need the DVDMaker.exe from Vista, so skip all the rest ) .

Make your folder/rename the extracted ones in Windows 8.x so that you have

C:\Program Files\DVD Maker

rename the Windows Vista DVDMaker.exe to DVDMaker8.exe and put it inside the folder so that you see 2 DVDMaker apps only with two different icons .

The codecs extract from the Windows 7 Disc, these are in the "system32" folder , Windows 8 has the same named codecs already installed, but these ones are crippled so that they will not work in DVDMaker. Only the ones from 7 will do. Vista has also working codecs, but lack mp4 support while Win 7's have, better use W7's if possible for you.

You need the following (w7) codecs :
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wmvsdecd.DLL
wmvsencd.DLL
wmvencod.DLL
wmvdecod.DLL
wmvsencd.DLL
wmvxencd.DLL

put these into a folder "codecs" and put that one inside your DVD Maker directory, so that you have "C\Program Files\DVD Maker\codecs" . Reason : We do not want to overwrite the Win8 ones which might be needed for modern apps and such.

Now open a command prompt as ADMIN and paste into :
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regsvr32 /s "C:\Program Files\DVD Maker\codecs\wmvdecod.DLL"

regsvr32 /s "C:\Program Files\DVD Maker\codecs\wmvencod.DLL"

regsvr32 /s "C:\Program Files\DVD Maker\codecs\wmvsencd.DLL"

regsvr32 /s "C:\Program Files\DVD Maker\codecs\wmvsdecd.DLL"

regsvr32 /s "C:\Program Files\DVD Maker\codecs\wmvsencd.DLL"

regsvr32 /s "C:\Program Files\DVD Maker\codecs\wmvxencd.DLL"

regsvr32 /s "C:\Program Files\DVD Maker\pipeline.dll

regsvr32 /s "C:\Program Files\DVD Maker\omdbase.dll

regsvr32 /s "C:\Program Files\DVD Maker\wmm2clip.dll


Now copy and paste the following into notepad and save as Register.REG , then doubleclick the reg file and allow these modifications to registry.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\GPUPipeline]
"InstallLocation"="C:\\Program Files\\DVD Maker"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\dvdmaker.exe]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\DVD Maker\\DVDMaker8.exe\""


If not already done install the MovieMaker app from "Windows Essentials 2012" ( Microsoft URL removed ) , this one will now offer Save to DVD in its menu and launch DVDMaker8.exe , (the renamed Vista-Version) but using Win7 codecs - fully working with preview and burn options .

Enjoy


Windows Udate Troubleshooting :

If future Windows Updates registers newer codecs , it can be possible that DVDMaker8.exe shows errors such as preview not working, wmv not supported and such. Then simply re-run the regsvr32 commands above ( you can copy/paste the commands in notepad and save as registercodecs.CMD , run as admin to make it simple and fast.