hey whats up ,
i have had some problems using certain programs (im on windows xp) so i did some playing around (and help from a how to guide on this site) and sort of made a combo of the programs into one, as well as test results on various machines.
I like using spruceup as it has a good menu creation, chapter entry,etc and it works well:
THE PROBLEM: it sees my burner but refuses to burn anything on it
SOLUTION-used the how to guide and saved my project as title(folders video_ts/audio) and burned with nero works fine
NEW PROBLEM-nero isn't exactly 100% compatible with all set top dvd players. Tried it in a friends magnavox and it would not work, but a dvd burned with sonic did.
STEP 2: i have both sonic le and PE editions. Sonic sometimes works and sometimes crashes, doesnt like bitrates higher then (well the new 2.5) 9.8 (older was 8.0)-some clips i have hit 10. However pretty much anything burned with sonic is usually 100% compatible in any player that can see a dvd-r
PROBLEM--LE works fine, the older PE 2.1 crashes, PE has many more options then lE, although now i have the PE 2.5 so that might change)
NEXT- ULEAD dvd factory--horrible and very limited menu creation

with all this fun i wanted to make a disc using spruceup, but i wanted audio during the menus thats only in Sonic dvdit PE, yet that version keeps crashing on my PC. LE works fine but alot of stuff i make does not conform to it.
So i came up with a way to sort of combine them all
Spruce up can make an image file(or folder). the name for the image file in Spruceup is ".img". That got me thinking, by starting a new project in Sonic dvdit and then going to "make disc" you can open up an image file, their image files though are ".image". Seeing as how their very close i renamed the image file from spruceup to a .image. Made sure in sonic that joilet and long names were unchecked. It burned the disc and played fine!!!.
I took it one step further and did something similar with sonic pe and made the folders. these could then be burned by nero or Sonic LE and it works.
When burning folders with Sonic you have to make a folder and inside that folder, have your video_ts and Audio_ts folders. Go to make disc and then look for "dvd volume" have it point into the folder that contains the video and audio folders and burn-.
Today i went out and tested some of these disc made using this method. The card read
1, spruceup 2 nero
2. Sonic PE 2 Sonic LE
3. Spruceup 2 sonic

the machines tested were "Sony, Zenith, Onkyo, Jvc, rca, and GE (pioneer and the Apex work fine as those are the machines i own).
i made a chart, some of these players did not see the dvd-rw (used a regular dvd-r as well for the test). The result (in a nutshell and without printing uo my chart) was that all of the machines saw the disc made by each burn method and played **except for the jvc which did not see the dvd-rw disc.
On the down side RCA did not read any of them. but a GE model (made by RCA) saw all 3 of them.
Also my friends magnavox saw a dvd-r made using sonic the regular way but did not see the spruceup burned with nero disc.
Im sure not many (if any) of you are having the chaos on your PC as i am, but if you are maybe this will help you out somewhat--thanks