DVD Authoring Nightmares

I've been trying to make a DVD with all of my videos on it recently. I don't know enough words to properly convey the complete and utter rage I've felt from this project. It started maybe two months and about ten versions of my DVD ago. My first very basic DVD was created using IDVD. I almost instantly realized the program was lacking in about every department and probably couldn't handle the scope of the project I was trying to undertake here. Mind you, it's about 30 videos, plus a lot of my other art, all my music and all kinds of retarded other stuff. After a couple of days I ditched my first project and did some snooping about on the interwebs and came to realize I already had a much more powerful DVD author software installed on my computer. Having the Adobe CS4 Master collection installed, I naturally already had Adobe Encore CS4 installed too. I next proceeded to commit myself to learning every aspect of Encore, burying myself in video tutorials and help manuals. After two long laborious weeks later I had created my first ultimate DVD project. Just as I was putting the finishing touches on it, through a freak accident I lost the project file it's self. The DrakeArnoldDVD .ncore file... I almost flipped out and spent many hours trying to figure out a way to get it back. I downloaded lots of applications that could revive files on a mac after they had already been emptied out of their trash can graveyard. No luck availed itself to me. I was going to have to rebuild the entire project from scratch.
As chance would have it though, I still had all of my source files for the project. I only lost the project file it's self but I still had all the reference files. This made rebuilding the project a good deal quicker. I already had all fifteen of my menus prepared [or some unreasonably huge number of menus for a dvd] and ready in Adobe Photoshop .psd file format. After another several days I had rebuilt the project yet again in all of it's awful glory.
You know, at this point I don't even remember exactly what happened. I just know that it didn't work. I think I kept getting errors while in the midst of the burning process. I remember trying everything I could to fix the error message for hours. I remember scouring forums, help topic pages, manuals, and everything for some solution to the error i kept getting. I kind of remember everything I read saying basically that I'd have to just rebuild my project yet again. I took a few days off so that I wouldn't rip my hair out, scream and cry uncontrollably. When I went back to start the project again I was terribly pissed and disgusted with what happened last time and that lead me to try rebuilding on my PC, as opposed to my Mac. I spent another week building up the project and putting everything back together again. The more I worked the more sluggish and unresponsive Encore would be. It got to the point where I couldn't even keep working because the program would freeze and quit unexpectedly every time I tried to open the project file or work for more than five minutes. Thats when I knew I would have to re-re-re-re-rebuild my DVD project. I wanted to lay down and cry and weep and grovel and moan I was so sad about it. What a bunch of fucking bullshit.
I was determined not to fuck with Adobe Encore CS4 again as I had just recently had an overwhelming amount of problems with it. I did more research and came to the conclusion that Apple DVDStudio Pro was probably my best bet and the most professional option I had. Once again I set about the tedious task of learning every in and out of yet another professional grade DVD authoring software. A few days and many tutorials later I was ready for action. I was impressed with what I saw about DVDSP and ready to start working on what I thought was a decent program. In a rush to finally complete my ever ongoing DVD project I literally rebuilt my same exact project from Encore in DVDSP. I used jpegs of the psd menus and just built it exactly the same. Through yet another one of those freak accidents, my dvd turned out to exceed the capacity limit by like 2 gbs. I was pissed but nothing could stop me. I went out and bought dual layer DVDs. I burned a few test copies and they actually worked [well, sort of]. After reviewing the test copies I knew there were a lot of little problems that I needed to fix. I also realized that my DVD wasn't really some 6.7 gbs like DVDSP's disc capacity gauge was telling me. I also thought about it and was like "Why am I using static images for my menu backgrounds, when I could really pimp this DVD out with motion menus. I burned myself about five copies of that version of my DVD just so I felt like my time wasn't completely wasted. Then I took another few days off from the project so that I wouldn't kill myself and everyone I loved and bury us all in the giant hole that was then in my back yard.
Fresh as a spring chicken, I took off kicking ass and taking names on still yet another version of my DVD project. Motion Menus, redesigned layouts, no more labyrinthine layout of 15 menus. Sweet, beautiful and simple. [I had so many menus before because all of my music was organized in the menus. Now It is all included as bonus DVD-ROM content, which makes a lot more sense anyways, that way you can copy the mp3's from the dvd on to your computer.] And only 3.6 Gbs this time like I knew it should have been. [I don't know why that disc gauge was reading like that on my old project, it was like it wouldn't update the gauge, even if I removed assets from my project]. I was ready to go. It took my quite a few days, but I was finally putting the finishing touches on my newly revamped DVD project last night, actually. Everything was set and ready to go. I had finally done it. I popped a blank DVD in to my external DVD drive [because I had to run out and buy an external DVD drive over the duration of this project as mine had died], and started the build/format process. Everything was running smoothly and then at 59% completion I received an "internal muxer error"...
I about lost it. I spent the rest of last night searching for ways to correct an internal muxer error until finally I had to go to bed to get up for work today. I just got home from work and the top of my list was venting frustration about this hell I have gone through. Writing this helps me feel as if I have gotten it off my chest, even though I know that no one will ever read this. It would be excruciatingly boring for the 99.99% of people out there who have never tried to author their own DVD. I can't help it though, I just want to scream off a mountain top "Fuck this cruel existence, if there is a God he must be laughing, and this shit isn't funny" I can't fucking take this stupid shit anymore.
Making a DVD is about as exciting for me as creating and ordering my business cards was. Not Very. It is something that needs to be done in order to promote myself and gain exposure, but there is nothing creative or fun about this. In total I am sure I have spent hundreds of hours working on this. My hours. Precious hours. Hours in between when I wake up, go to work, go to sleep, repeat. This shit has been my life for months. I need to get back to doing creative shit immediately because this is driving me fucking mad!!!

Wow... okay... I feel a lot ... better now. This has been a really long post, but I really needed to vent my frustration. I think it's time to grab my meager pittance of bread and water for the day and then start doing more google searches for "Internal Muxer Error"... ::sigh::