DVD-Software.info

['puter nitwit]

So as my user name should indicate, I'm pretty much a computer nitwit. Basically a point and click kinda guy. I can navagate through some things, but I'm new to the whole dvd making thing. I recently got a new Dell that came w/ some DVD burning s/w on it. Sonic I believe (not on that computer right now), but can't remember what version it is. Anyway, I've also got a digital 8 camcorder, and had wanted to take some of those tapes and put them on DVD. Well, to cut to the chase, that software really stinks for someone like me. I had originally tried transfering the data via USB cable, later realized that the quality of the video was pretty poor. Got the firewire cable and that made it look a lot better (watching it play while it was alledgedly recording/transfering). After it says it's done, it turns out it never really did. The disk will have a header/main menu, but that's it. They won't play, they don't have any chapters (even though I select for it to have one every 5 minutes), nothing. I saw later making a photo CD on the same s/w, that there was another option to format the data to be able to be used on a wider variety of players, but that had no effect on it at all.
Bottom line of what I'm trying to ask is this. Is there any good/reliable s/w out there that doesn't cost $200+, that is made for the programing challenged? I'm about to the point where I may just buy an DVD player/recorder unit that you can just plug and play with. My brother has one like that and I've actually used it to record dirrectly off of my camera to it. I had really wanted to be able to edit some of the stuff (cut some things out, paste other things in), but seeing as I can't even get it to write and play, that seems pretty unlikely at this stage.
Thanks for your time and advice, have a good one!