I have been able to successfully make working DVDs with Disk Imager and Disk Copy. I'm going t try Toast next, although I'll first go back to Toast 5.x, as Toast 6 has not worked for me. (I did burn it as DVD UDF but no luck). My question is this: why is it necessary to make a disk image and burn it that way? What is it that a DVD player is looking for that it doesn't find if you just copy the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS files to a DVD-R. This is more of a technical question than a how-to question.
It is not necessary to make a disk image before burning. There are 2 things you need to keep in mind, however : 1- The vast vast majority of DVDs use copy protection to prevent "just copy"ing the DVDs. "Ripping" the dvd removes the CSS and creates VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders, which don't need to be 'imaged' 2- Compatibility will be best if you include the (empty) AUDIO_TS folder as well, but be aware of the invisible files used to store folder view preferences- In OS X these are called ".DS_Store"