Burn to a DVD or Blu-ray disc

  1. Before starting Adobe Premiere Elements, connect and turn on all external DVD or Blu-ray burners.
  2. In the Share view of the Tasks panel, click Disc to open Disc view.
  3. In Disc view, choose either DVD or Blu-ray from the menu.
  4. Select Disc as the Burn To option.
  5. Type a name for the disc. This name appears in Windows if you insert the disc into a computer after the DVD burn has been completed. (The default name is a date stamp in 24‑hour format: YYYYMMDD _ hhmmss.)
  6. Select a burner from the Burner Location menu.
  7. Make sure that a compatible disc is inserted in the drive. If you insert a disc, click Rescan to check all connected burners for valid media.
  8. In the Copies box, enter the number of discs you want to burn during this session. You are prompted to insert new discs until all have been burned. Encoding the video and audio takes place only once.
  9. For Preset Selection, select the option for the television standard used in the geographic location of your audience.
  10. (Optional) Select Fit Contents To Available Space. If burning to a DVD, you can deselect this option and drag the slider to choose the video quality you want. (By default, this option is selected for DVD, and deselected for Blu-ray.)
  11. Click Burn to begin converting your project to the DVD or Blu-ray format and burning the disc. If you are burning a DVD, and a burner is not available, you can burn to a DVD folder, and then burn the resulting files to DVD when the burner is available.
    Important: Encoding the video and audio for disc output can take several hours.

Guidelines for successful disc burning

Once the movie includes the editing and navigation you want, the burning process is fairly straightforward. However, incompatible devices and media, or unexpected time factors can affect quality and completion. For a successful experience, consider the following guidelines when burning discs.

Note: If encoding errors occur, consult the Troubleshooting section in Help.

  • Allow enough time. Encoding video and audio for a disc can take hours. Consider burning overnight. If you plan to burn several DVDs or Blu-ray discs, burn them in the same session by using the Copies option in the Burn dialog box so that you encode the project only once.

  • Update drivers and firmware. Make sure that you have installed the latest drivers and firmware (software contained in a read-only device (ROM), which has instructions for controlling the operation of peripheral devices) for your burner. You can download updates from the Internet.

  • Choose a compatible burner. To make a DVD or Blu-ray disc in Adobe Premiere Elements, you must have a compatible burner. First, make sure your system has a burner, not just a CD-ROM, CD-R, DVD-ROM drive, or Blu-ray drive. Then, check to see if the drive is compatible with Adobe Premiere Elements by looking for it in the Burner Location menu after you choose Disc from the Share view in the Tasks panel.

  • When burning a DVD, choose quality DVD recordable media and a compatible DVD media format. Not all DVD burners and DVD players support all types of DVDs. However, you can’t burn the DVD unless your DVD burner supports the format of the disc. For example, a burner that supports only +R or +RW discs doesn’t burn to ‑R or ‑RW discs. The same is true for DVD players. Many older DVD players might not recognize some rewritable discs created on a newer DVD burner.

  • Provide plenty of defragmented, free hard disk space. You must have enough available hard disk space to accommodate the complete compressed files, as well as any scratch files created during export. The space requirements for your project appear in the Burn dialog box.

  • Avoid making unnecessary previews. Previews of your Timeline or Sceneline are useful for checking how your finished movie looks and plays, but they take time to create and are not used in the burning process.

  • Test your discs. If you make a mistake with a recordable disc, you must use another disc; whereas if you make a mistake with a rewritable disc, you can reuse it. For this reason, consider using a DVD‑RW or BD-RE (rewritable) disc for making test discs and then switching to a DVD‑R General Use disc or BD-R disc for final or extra copies. DVD‑R for General Use is write‑once recordable format that provides excellent compatibility with both stand‑alone DVD players and DVD‑ROM drives.

  • Avoid running nonessential computer tasks during export. Turn off screen savers and power savers. Avoid scanning for viruses, downloading updates, searching on the web, playing computer games, and so on.