Burning a CD or DVD is very easy on Mac OS X — first you insert a blank CD or DVD in your Mac. You will see a dialog like the one you see in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: How do you want to burn your CD or DVD?
Typically, you could choose the Open in Finder action — unless you want to create a DVD you want to play on your TV, for which you will choose the Open iDVD option. You can also choose the Open iTunes option if you want to create a music CD. If you need to burn an image to a CD or DVD, you can choose the Open Disk Utility option — we covered this in the earlier Burn Image to CD or DVD with Disk Utility post. You can see all these options in Figure 2, below.
Figure 2: Choose Open Finder to burn a regular data CD or DVD
Tip: Do you want to use a third-party application such as Roxio Toast to burn your disc? If you don’t see this application here, choose the Open Other Application option.
If you choose the Open Finder option, you’ll see a Finder window with a CD or DVD listed as a folder on the Sidebar, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Untitled DVD is your new DVD (or CD) — also note that you can see how much space is available in your DVD or CD
You can also right-click (or Ctrl-click) the CD or DVD listed on the Sidebar, and choose some of the options shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Rename your disc, or remove it
The Rename option lets you change the volume name of the disc. The Remove option lets you delete the disc project altogether.
To add files to burn to disc, drag your files to the disc’s folder — you will see how much space is available on your new disc, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: How much free space is available on your disc?
At this point of time, no disc has been burned. Once you are ready to burn your disc, just select the File | Burn (Disc Name) menu option as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Get your disc burning
You will see a message box that lets you choose the burn speed, and if you want to save the disc compilation to a folder (useful if you need to burn multiple copies of the disc), a shown in Figure 7, below
Figure 7: Choose the burn speed
Click the Burn button, and OS X starts burning your disc, as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8: Your disc is burning