I'm sort of lazy and want the easy way out. I have the Hitachi MV-580A DVD camcorder. I buy Panasonic RAM discs on E-bay for around 4-5 $ each. Instead of trying to burn on DVD-R so it will play on any DVD player, I just bought a cheap Panasonic DVD player on E-bay. Playback is just fine. Sure the RAM discs will not play on other DVD players, but if you look hard enough you can find Maxell DVD-R at a price reasonable enough to re-record without worring about $'s.

Editing on Hitachi's cheap included software is good enough for my uses. Most likely many on this forum will consider me a Phillistine, but, for my purposes, what I've described suits me fine. Hope this helps.