What exactly are you doing that's giving you problems? It sounds like you're trying to compile from source. What steps have you taken and what errors are you getting? Which distro are you using?
One common dependency problem with compiling from source is making sure you have all the proper header files installed. Most distros split their libraries into separate libxxx and libxxx-dev packages, the latter containing all the header files needed for compiling packages against that library. So the first thing you should do is make sure that you have all the -dev packages for the libraries you need installed.
(It would certainly help if more programmers included detailed lists of the dependencies their programs use. The README files on most source packages leave a lot to be desired.)
As for other all-in-one dvd-creating options, two good ones I know about are
tovid and
devede. Both should be available in most distros' repositories. I haven't used either one myself though. I prefer to process my videos into mpeg2 separately using ffmpeg, transcode, or avidemux, then creating the dvd structure separately with dvdstyler or sometimes qdvdauthor*. But then, I prefer to have more control over each step of the operation. The all-in-ones usually only give you a limited set of output designs.
*Qdvdauthor is more powerful, and lets me do things like add video buttons, but it's frustratingly unstable and requires a lot of effort to work around its bugs.
