OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Recording to Optical Discs

Most modern Macs can write data to optical media. This process is commonly known as burning (or recording) to disc. Many types of recordable media are available, including CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, and DVD+-R. OS X supports all these formats, so you don't have to worry about them. (One exception is the Blu-ray DVD format, which OS X can't read or write to, but third-party programs such as Roxio's Toast can write to it—if you have a recordable Blu-ray drive, of course.)

Creating a burn folder

Burn folders are an easy way of organizing content that you want to take from your Mac to an optical disc. The great thing about burn folders is that after you've recorded the contents to the optical disc, you still have the burn folder so you make new copies easily later, and you can update it and make copies of the changed version, without starting from scratch. This is handy if you want to back up a changing set of documents, such as project files or family photo albums.

To create a burn folder, choose File⇒New Burn Folder. The burn folder is created in the active Finder window or on the desktop (if no Finder window is open). By default, the name of the folder is Burn Folder, instead of a regular folder's default name of Untitled; but like other newly created folders, the name is highlighted so you can change it.

Now you can drag items from the Finder into the burn folder. As you drag items into the burn folder, aliases from the original items ...