Nero it's a nightmare any other suggestions

It depends on what you do. If you simply want to burn files and folders, use Imgburn.

Roxio and Nero are very bloated.

CDBurnerXp is a nice free program and for most of the sub programs of the two major players (Roxio and Nero) well you can find freeware programs to take care of those also.

If you are looking for a pay program then you might take a look at VSO CopytoDVD; frequent updates and works great with Win7.

Once you give ImgBurn a try and learn its features it could just be the best option and is my favorite burning software.

Try this list of tools with user comments:

Tools - Video software and downloads - VideoHelp.com

You can also use it to find converters, muxers, authoring tools etc..

I use Imgburn to burn and several freewares for conversions depending on exactly what input and output I want. Just about any free converter that uses HCenc and doesn't crash should give you good output. Try AVStoDVD, FAVC, well, use the list tool in the link. :)