Why does it have to be so hard??

Trying to write the AVI files I have of the Olympics opening into a DVD. I've installed and uninstall over a dozen programs so far. And they either throw some kind of error, or they end up spitting out a huge vob file that would not fit on a single DVD.

*beats head*

At this point I'm almost ready to throw my arms up in defeat and just go buy a freaking licensed program. (Also, apparently Nero on my laptop was only a trial version for 30 days and it's past the 30 days. =_=)