OK, I am fairly new to this and badly need some help hopefully somebody can advise me!

Story goes,

I have a DVD Recorder a Philips DVDR3480 and recently I have begun transferring some stored TV programmes and Films from my Sky+ box (a Satellite PVR, like Tivo incase you don't know).

I am using Sonic MyDVD LE (Dell provided software which has many features blanked out). Anyway when I record the film/tv show and record everything it is fine allowing me to add chapters, trim and Burn to blank disk. However when I hide scenes (ad breaks usually) using the DVD recorder it will only pick up around 66% of the video making the whole thing useless as the other 34% over an hour in a three hour film missing.

I'd like to know what is causing this and if it can be rectified on my software.

However; the software that I am using is pretty crap anyway and ideally I like to use a software that would allow me to edit the video, ie. cut out ad breaks and insert a few "bleebs" instead of bad language, for home videos (don't ask! ) and of course have the usual toys of creating the title menu and customisable backgrounds etc. My Budget for this software is around $50 and ideally it should be pretty idiot proof. Please also recommend freeware versions too. The whole cutting out the ads is all I am missing now.

Any help would be great

uLead DVD Factory can do that kind of stuff. Free, uncrippled 21 day demo so you can try it. IIRC it does cost about $70, probably less on eBay.