Hi
"One thing I've noticed is that the recorded disc is recorded from the center of the disc out towards the edge and the outside area is blank."
As far as I am aware this is normal. DVDs and CDs are read from the centre outwards and are consequently burnt like that. All mine are like this..and they do play. 
"The disc will playback on the PC, but without the chapters (don't know if that's normal.)"
Again, depending on what type of DVD player your PC is using you may not be able to access the chapters from a menu. However I think you can skip from chapter to chapter using > or < button if your player has one. Unfortunately the DVD creating part of VP won't create menus which would be very useful.
With regards to wasting DVD discs, you may be better off burning to re-writable DVDs (DVD-RW) as if there is a problem VP will erase the disc before re-burning with any new settings you make.
If you have another DVD burner which you know works, then you could save your film to your PC.
Click "Save Movie"
Click "Computer/Data"
Browse to a folder to recieve your film (Easy to use is the desktop)
Click the drop down menu for "Preset" and select HD 720 (or the format of your choice)
This, (for my movies/slideshows) shows avi as the container.
Set your frame size (Resolution) or accept the default. Mine would be 1280 x 720 HD.
Now click the "Encoder Options" button followed by the "Video compression settings" bar.
Slide the tab on the slider to the left so the reading is 1.0. (or enter 1.0 into the box marked Quality.
OK
OK
Your film will be created on the desktop (or your folder) from where you can play it on the PC to check the quality or save it to disc with a different burner or program. Originally I used Microsoft DVD creator as this would create menus. However I found the quality was not always particularly good as from what I have managed to find out the program converts to WMV first and then to VOB. Whatever the case some areas do have compression artifacts.
I seem to get better DVD quality if I burn the avi to disc using a free program called Sothink Movie DVD Maker.This is free, seems to work OK (apart from an advertising banner that appears between items which some find a bit intrusive..unless you buy the product) and will present your different films from a preview menu of contents.
Nat