So I'm editing this film for a class in Premiere and need to output it to a DVD.  Do any of you have any experience with this? I honestly have never even burned a dvd, just bought a burner for it actually + some blank discs.

Mainly, wondering what program I should use to do this.  I've been editing the film in Premiere and remember hearing from somewhere that Adobe puts out a burning program but I have no idea what it is.

I addition, I have no idea what type of format/encoding I should be outputing the file to for dvd ideally.

If you just want quick and acceptable quality burning so that a file will play in a DVD player, you can go with like DVDFlick or ConvertXtoDvd (both of those work well). If you want to get a bit more technical with the bitrate and encoding properties, you can look into CCE or TMPG.

is a good resource for this type of thing.

Also, I thought that the later versions of Premiere had burning capabilities built into them... I haven't used it in ages so I can't be sure.

yea im using TMPGenc for encoding.  I read that Premiere did too, but I seriously don't trust it.  I'd rather do my authoring in a completely different program as I dont even like how Adobe does its encoding at all.

I guess I'm more wondering on how to make discs with menus+ multiple audio/video tracks.  I mean this isn't something essential at all. I coudl just burn them to play the one video.  I just thought it would be fun to make some more professional looking discs, and just be a cool learning experience.

...so i got my burner today and it came with Nero 7 Essentials.  I've been using the 6 Suite for the longest time but this shit is just complete bloat.  When did Nero become such crap?  That thing seriously added like 10 new processes to my startup, its ridiculous.

I haven't tried out Nero 7 yet, but I guess it isn't too surprising...

As for the menus, I haven't really gone too far into making elaborate menus (usually just an image and a play button), but I use TMPGEnc DVD Author. It actually looks like it could do some very complex menu systems, but I always opt for the simplist one.