*sigh* ...so, winavi seems to have worked like a charm. i encoded an xvid avi in 25 minutes flat. problem is, nero vision 4 wouldnt let me burn vob's correctly so i tried nero vision 3. THAT told me i needed to buy the dvd-plugin. so, im dl'ing a newer version of nero 6 with all the plugins registered.
Me->
(update) EDIT: there has got to be a codec or something somewhere in my pc that is causing the audio to be fucked up. im clearing out and re-installing all of my software. if that doesnt work, im re-formatting this motherfakker.