Old School Adobe Premiere
 

I've recently started using my old Premiere 6.5 software again, exporting to DVD this time around. Supposedly the software included DVDit but not my copy. What's the best and most economical DVD software that is compatible?

I've had pretty good luck with Nero, but never tried it with software that old. YMMV.

I would recommend Nero as well. Export out of Premiere as a single DV avi and then import into Nero. Nero will transcode to mpeg 2, burn and author. Another solution is DVDlab by media chance, with that you can export out of Premiere as an elementary stream mpeg 2 stream and then import into DVDlab. Nero should already have the dolby digital, which you would need to buy separate with DVDlab, so Nero would be the most economical.

I must be doing something wrong. Premiere always exports the audio and video as separate files. Is there a setting option I'm missing here?

That's an mpeg 2 elementary stream. If you have the full version of Nero you would want to feed it a DV avi. So export - movie - pick Microsoft DV avi. Then put that into Nero and have it make the mpeg 2 and author how you want. Hope this makes sense.

Old School Premiere
 

Sorry, I didn't fully explain my situation beforehand. I've gone the single avi route before, using my existing Roxio software, with poor quality results (due to the lower quality "movie" mode I guess). I need to be able to export to DVD as a single file or be able to combine the two files from the elementary stream. I get beautiful video this way but, of course, no audio. Do I need to go for more professional authoring software, DVDit LE for instance?

Give DVD-lab a try:

Mediachance Download Page

You can read about DVD-lab (and the different versions) here:

http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/

I always used Cinema Craft Basic Encoder it comes with a plug-in for Premiere 6.5, I never found a better encoder, you can then author with any authoring program that doesn't re-encode. I used TMPGEnc DVD Author.
Bryan

I would second DVD-Lab. It will take your mpeg elementary stream out of Premiere. Again, Nero does a really good job at the doing the encoding as well, just another thing to think about.