DVD Burner and making menus

Ok so I'm getting a DVD burner for my girlfriend this Christmas. I gots a few questions though. Is it hard to set up a standard menu with chapters on the DVD. Like if I wanted to start burning some Anime episodes would it be hard to set points in the episode to use for chapter select one right after the opening credits, one in the middle and, one at the end before the credits?

All those features are dependant upon the software you use. I suspect you're going to want something very consumer-friendly, so go with Sonic MyDVD or similar - something you can just plug some AVI files in one end and get a working DVD out the other. This class of software will usually be able to automatically generate menus for you, and adding chapter stops is normally easy too. The downside of the "hand-holding" class of software is the lack of customizability, but at least you don't have much to learn.

I don't mind learning even if its a little hard to do. I'd like to have a menu with some music and options like chapter select and a title. Things like that. Can you reccomend anything. I think the one I'm getting has Nero with it.

>>3
Not too sure - I've haven't used Nero much, but I think it's rather on the basic side, and the versions that get supplied with DVD burners can be pared-down "lite" versions too. I've used Sonic MyDVD and Roxio Media Creator a bit more, and IIRC they should do all the things you want (chapter menus and such). Roxio is bugged all to hell though (version 8 was anyway), so approach with caution. My software of choice is Adobe Encore 2.0, which is about as powerful as you'll get in the consumer stakes - multiple audio and subs, seamless branching, animated menu background and foregrounds, interactive overlays... Everything is controllable, but you do need to put more work into designing the menus (ideally in Photoshop because of how Encore recognises buttons, video areas, etc.), and I like to do the MPEG-2 encoding beforehand in TMPGEnc, which is faster and more flexible than the rather fussy built-in encoder. It's more work, but with effort the results can look like a professionally-authored DVD.