If you want to backup and play your commercial DVDs you will need libdvdcss in most cases, which is easily found, but maybe illegal to use. I found DVD:Rip the best solution for ripping DVD. I removed my tutorial on that due to my own paranoia. I guess it is illegal to write about that. I don't know if that is true or not, but I don't like taking unnecessary risks.

There are a lot of brands, but Philips 16x DVD-R media work really well in most DVD players.

Tools. You only need one tool to create DVD without touching the command line. QDVDAuthor is a front end to DVDAuthor and works like a champ. There are a few libraries you will need, but they are all available in the package manager so you do not need to compile or convert anything.

These will offer the most options and back end support, some are required. ffmpeg is absolutely the best tool for converting video IMO. If you need these wonderful tools on OS X get a copy of ffmpegx. You may need the Medibuntu sources :

dvdauthor
qdvdauthor
ffmpeg
transcode
mencoder
dvd+rw-tools
dvdrtools
dvd-slideshow
libmjpegtools
libmpeg2-4
lame
lame-extras
toolame
libmad0
libdvdnav4
libdvdplay0
libdvdread3

Once installed fire up qdvdauthor and in the file menu select Tools, Setup. Select the Paths tab then click Scan System. You may see three orange colored fields, which means they are not found, but these are not important. You should see that it picked up dvdauthor, Spumux, mplex, transcode, Lame, etc... Life is good if that is the case.

I already assume you can play back DVD and most media types. Even though these things really are not needed to make a DVD  it's good to have the loaded up, as qdvdauthor will use them to playback audio/video. My personal preferences for video playback are:

xine
xineui
mplayer
mplayer Firefox extension
realplayer

With the needed codex and DVD support installed all things just work.

Now to the good stuff. Go to Internet Archive and download a couple of Public Domain movies. If you can't find mpegs format no problem, but get a decent sized file. The bigger the file size the better the quality in most cases and qdvdauthor will convert video to the proper format.

If you find an MPEG2 around 3 or 4 gigs you will only be able to fit one movie to a DVD-R. It's more interesting to put two or three movies on one DVD so find two or three films between 700mb to 1gig - we need to stay in total below about 4.7gigs - you get the idea...

In you home directory create a directory called /movie_proj
In /movie_proj create a directory named /tmp and a directory called /dvd_out
We will be using these next. 

The DVD menu...

There are templates for you to use by selecting Install Templates under the Tools menu, but that isn't very personal. Let's create a simple menu using our own background. Find a wallpaper that looks cool and fits the movie genre. Simply click Add background. At this point if you haven't created your project it will walk you through this process.

Set your tmp directory we created earlier /home/*your_user_name*/movie_proj/tmp

Next> Name your project and specify you DVD path,
/home/*your_user_name*/movie_proj/dvd_out

Click Add Background again and select your background image. If it tells your it's the wrong image size click yes to automatically resize it.  Keep the defaults on the next screen and click ok. If you want sound when the menu is displayed add a wav, ogg, or mp3, looped is best. IN the Tool menu select  Visible Region, which is a safety zone. Keep you text, images, and buttons within this area.

Before we create our actual menu let's add our movies. On the left side you will find the Add Movie button. At the bottom of the screen there is a size indicator. I like to keep this below 95%. If it goes over just remove one of the movies.

In the box above the Add Movie button under the tab All you will see the sound clip, if included, for your menu and your movies. We will be creating a simple text menu, but you can use images or even a still from the film as buttons, but for quickness just grab each film and drag/drop them to the Main Menu area. Delete the movie still image if created and edit the text to reflect the movie's name. This method uses the file's name so you will most likely need to edit that. To do this right click the text and choose Edit. You can set text color, size there also. Right click again and choose Matrix if you want the skew or rotate. You can also add a drop shadow if you like.

Once your design and menu options are the way you want them click on the first movie menu option text and right click. Select Define As Button. Name your button, set Action to jump and select the appropriate movie item in the drop down. Select the Highlighted and Selected tabs to edit color changed when a menu selection is highlighted and selected. Repeat for each movie button.

Creating and Burning your DVD.

Now we are ready to create our DVD! Here is where problem generally arise, but they are typically minor issues. At the top there is a big button with a DVD image, click it to create your disc.

The command dialog will pop up and there are a few changes you will need to make or you will get errors. On the drop down for each video displayed, if any, select transcode!

If you added sound to your menu you need to remove a switch under the multiplex. At the beginning of the line, you may need to move back with the mouse, you will see mplex -f 8 -o             Remove the -o option.

Now at the very bottom there is an option to burn the DVD to disc, tick that. Put your blank CD-R in the drive and click Ok. This will not be done in a few minutes and could actually take a few hours depending on your hardware and/or the need to convert the video! I have had bad luck with burning from QDVDAuthor, you can simply burn the T_audio and T_video directories in your DVD output directory using K3B.