You sound similar to me, i have been looking for a "one stop" solution insted of the 4/5 steps using seperate authoring progs and encoders etc, I tried winavi and dvd santa and end up with nerovision express.
Join the 2 pieces with something like avi mpeg joiner or in nerovision express you can add the 2 to the project and they will be joined automatically.
You will now get posts saying nero is crap at re-encoding ect and maybe you can get better, but for a half-wit like myself i'm sticking to it.
Good luck.