Burning DVD from Hard Drive File

[jvarick]

If I "burn" a project to a folder instead of to a DVD, can I copy that folder to a DVD (using Nero or some such thing) so that it will play on a DVD player? I am working on converting family VHS tapes to DVDs and I eventually will be making copies for each of our kids. I burned the first project to both a folder and a DVD but the menu does not work on the DVD (words do not highlight on the Main Menu). It does work when I play it from the folder. I thought that it would be a better work flow to save the project to the folder, then make the copies from the file. (It took 12-24 hours to render.)
Thanks for your help.

[Chuck Engels]

If you are using version 3 and have not installed the patch that is most likely the problem with the DVD menu.

You can burn the folder to a disc using Nero or RecordNow and the DVD should play fine, but you should be able to burn with Premiere Elements and not have problems. Although, burning to a folder is the better method anyway because you can burn as many discs as you want, whenever you want and it won't take long at all. You are also able to set the burn speed in most other programs and that is a plus also.

[Chuck Engels]

(It took 12-24 hours to render.)

I would also be interested in your system specs, that is way to long unless you have a project that is about 40 hours long.
I highly recommend installing the version 3 patch if you haven't already, I think that will solve lots of problems.

[jvarick]

Thanks for the reply, Chuck. I think part of the problem I have with how long it takes to burn a project is the lack of drive memory. I have cleared up some space, so hopefully it will be better. I have updated to 3.0.2 from Adobe's website. Hopefully that will solve my menu problems. The problem that I had with using Nero to burn a DVD of a project already in a folder was that Nero kept trying to have me add chapters (which I had already done in PE3). I couldn't figure out which files generated by PE3 needed to be burned to the DVD and if they had to be structured in such a way that a DVD player would recognize them.
You asked about hardware.
Compaq Presario PC S4300NX, Windows XP 2002 SP2, Pentium 4, 2.40 GHz, 1.49 GB DDR SDRAM, currently about 3GB free hard drive space, I/O Magic Dual Format 8X DVD+RW/+R Drive