Newbie Help

I am honestly ignorant to digital video. Let me start with what I am trying to do...

1. I want to take iPhone 4 video and burn it to a standard DVD-R so it will play in my Blu-Ray player.

2. I would also like to take the same video and burn it to a standard DVD-R in standard definition to play in a standard DVD player.

First, I am running Lion on a late 2009 Macbook Pro. I have iMovie '09 and have reinstalled iDVD. After much reading, I think I have determined that item #2 can be accomplished with the listed programs - I just don't know what I need to do or the process to do it. I have all movies already imported to iPhoto and I have the thumbnails already showing in iMovie.

As far as item #1, after much research, what I am gathering is that Toast with the Blu-Ray plug-in is about the only way to go. The problem I am finding is that Toast 11 is getting really bad user reviews. I'd rather not throw $100+ at a program if it is not going to function properly.

The other option I have considered is throwing the movies onto a thumb drive to play in my Oppo BD-80 player. Oppo states they support MP4 and MKV, it just needs to be in the proper "container". Again, new to this. Will Handbrake accomplish creating the proper container needed, or am I reading wrong on this? I know I won't be able to put the completed project on DVD-R, but thought this might be a workaround using a thumbdrive.

Thanks in advance. It just seems the more I read, the deeper I get reading about things that are way over my head at this stage of the game. I just need a starting point - again thanks.

 

Thanks for the help. I've just read some user reviews that were not that great - mainly reading that Toast 11 has degraded from 10, 10 from 9, etc.. Personally, I have not used it but it looks pretty straight forward. Anyone know if Handbrake will create proper containers for HD video to be played on a thumbdrive?

Thanks