QUOTE (powderedtoastman @ Dec 10 2006, 10:53 PM)

doh! it happened again! tried to burn the DVD again. This time i removed all the aliases, thinking that would fix it. i still got the same issue. and yes, dm seems to stand for dmg. errrr why??
the burnt the dmg itself so that the icon layout and size would remain intact. And that worked fine on a sample burn (just empty folder icons) using a CD-R, but for some reason, not on the DVD! Could it be that the DVD hierarchy is just too complicated!!? thanks!
Let's go through this again. Create a temporary partition (or empty disc image) in the Finder. You might try using Toast's temporary partition command in the Utilities window instead of using Disk Utility to create this image file. Drag in and organize the files and folders the way you want them. Dragging in aliases is a problem because they will keep pointing to the original files rather than the ones in the partition. So you'll need to create new aliases in the partition itself.
When you are done with this, select Mac & PC as the format in the Toast Data window. Click New Disc (and give the disc a name). Now drag in the contents from the mounted partition. You'll see all your folders listed in the Toast window.
Burn your DVD or choose Save as Disc Image from the File menu. If you choose the latter you can mount that .toast image file to see how it all looks. When you are ready, you can burn that disc image with the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window.
You cannot burn a file with a .dm extension and have the Mac do anything about opening it. It won't know what a .dm file is. Copying that file from a disc to the hard drive and then adding the "g" so it is a .dmg file should enable the OS to mount it from the hard drive, though.