It has been a while since anyone polled this and reliability is such a "statistical" issue. I'll go first...

I switch between spruceup(v1.1)+NERO(latest) and Ulead DVD Movie Factory (v2.12.1) (if I'm in a rush).

MORE DETAILS IF YOU CARE:

Out of 300+ DVD-Rs spanning 3 years and 7 DVD players I have found many incompatibilities (approx 5%). I tried but could not correlate to specific media, burning SW, authoring SW or DVD player. Just the cost of being on the cutting edge.

Nap

Scenarist is hands down the best DVD authoring program on the planet. It should be since it's a professional tool.
It's unfortunate that it costs what it does because almost none of us hobbyists can afford to buy a legal copy Scenarist is also ridiculously complicated to use and it is probably the most user unfriendly DVD authoring program on the planet.

I usually burn with Nero, more for convenience than anything else.

My favourite is Spruce DVDMaestro to author and Prassi Primo DVD to burn. Sometimes I use SpruceUp if I don't need subtitles and the source is 4:3 aspect ratio.

DVDlab and RecordNow

Adobe Encore good for me.

I usually use DVD-Lab or Sonic DVD producer and sometimes ReelDVD ,I just Picked up the New "Sonic Scenarist 3.0" which I think i will Give a Try But it is very complicated and hard to figure out.....

I usually use DVDlab to author now. Its still a bit buggy, and has a limitation or two, but its very nice, and relatively easy to use.

TMPGEnc's program is okay, and I use it for MPEG1 authoring.

I still use Nero for burning, and although I'm sure there are better programs, its working okay for me.

mark

I like TMPG DVD author and RecordNow Max, both are easy to use and produce great results.

Ulead DVD Workshop or Ulead Moviefactory 2 for quick and dirty stuff..

I am using Ulead Video Studio 7. It is not expensive and it seems to render good quality files

You can do a lot worse than Ulead VideoStudio 7. I have it, and although I don't often use it, as an all-in-one product its pretty good. It'll edit, encode, and burn. The Encoder is based on the mainconcept encoder, and is pretty decent.

mark

This poll a few years ago was pretty limited. Not much worked back then. Now it almost passe'.

Its been a while since I used Spruceup - should try it again. I thought they were going to release a new ver as a new company...? I'll need to check out Maestro also. DVD Factory is OK. Check my other thread re: ULEAD at the CES Convention in Las Vegas.

Thanks to all. If there are any others feel free to continue this thread.