Export Media in Premiere Pro CS6 ONLY produces an Audio File in Media Encoder

Question

First, all the system info:
Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1
Intel HD Graphics 3000 Display Adapter
I’m using Premiere Pro CS6 Version 6.0.5 (001  (MC: 264587)) “Mighty Kilt”
Version 6.0.3.1 (64 Bit) of Adobe Media Encoder CS6
Other Adobe applications installed: AIR, Creative Cloud, Download Assistant, Encore CS6 Library, Flash Player 12 ActiveX, Flash Player 12 Plugin, Help Manager, Premiere Pro CS6, Premiere Pro CS6 Functional Content, Reader XI
I’ve run check for updates on both Premiere Pro and Media Encoder and everything is up to date
I'm producing a two disc, dual layer DVD set for 100 families of my son's marching band.
I have a half hour "masterwork" of interviews, performance segments, rehearsal sequences, credits, etc that I've edited together complete with sound, etc.
I also then have various other video segments from the season, some high quality (1920x1080) and some lower quality.
Rather than import everything into Encore and have Encore transcode them all at the same quality, I wanted to ensure that the half-hour piece and certain other segments were transcoded as high quality as possible and given the largest file sizes I could and then transcode other segments at lower quality levels as needed so everything would fit on the discs.
The company I'm using to duplicate/replicate the 100 DVDs from my Master DVD advised me to encode them FIRST in Premiere Pro as desired, and THEN import those files into Encore.
I've used Adobe Media Encoder a lot to export the individual segments into files I could upload to Youtube and have had no problem for the last several months.
But now, two things happen:
1) AME automatically designates the "Output File" with an .aac extension (see attached)
2) When I do an "Import As" of the AME encoded file in Encore it only loads an audio file (obviously)
Huh?
Here are the settings I use in my Export Media dialogue in Premiere Pro CS6:
Format: MPEG2-DVD
Preset: NTSC Widescreen High Quality
Output Name (and filetype): ______ name with Save as Type of "Video Files(*.mpg)
BOTH the "Export Video" and "Export Audio" boxes are checked (see attached screen print)
Filters Tab: left as is, don't do anything here
Multiplexer Tab:
choose the "DVD" button (vs the "None" button)
Bitrate Type: left as Variable which is what is selected as a default
Video Tab:
Codec: Reads MainConcept MPEG Video
Quality: increase it to the max of 5
TV Standard: NTSC
Frame Rate: 29.97
Field Order: None (Progressive)
Pixel Aspect Ration: Widescreen 16:9
Render at Maximum Depth box checked
Bitrate Encoding: I choose CBR for my high quality segments and VBR 2-pass for my lower quality segments
Bitrate: kick it up to the max for high qulaity segments, adjust as needed to get the filesize I want for my lower quality segments
Audio Tab:
Audio Format: Dolby Digital
Codec: Dolby Digital
Bitrate: At least 320, sometimes higher for the segments I want to be the highest quality
I check the "Use Maximum Render Quality" box
I chose "Queue" for everything and then let it run overnight
And yes, the original media has BOTH a video track and an audio track that works (see Screenprint)
So... what am I doing wrong, helpful experts????

Answer 1

Larry, Mark, Jim & Bill -
It is 1 am Tuesday morning and I'd do a primal scream if my family weren't all sleeping upstairs.
Somewhere along the way, I either read or was given the advice to just skip AME, load my videos as timelines in Encore, and just do the transcoding there.
I spent almost a day trying to figure out how to get "buttons" for my menus I was building (they weren't appearing in Encore's library like they should) and eventually found a simply workaround.
So I then spent the last 24 hours or so building all my menus, creating small clips for my "motion menu" buttons, getting all that straightened away.
Got really excited earlier tonight since it seemed like I was nearly finished and coming down the home stretch.
I hit "build" in Encore, went away for a couple hours, and came back to find a big error message awaiting me telling me that "Encoding Failed."
I have read a lot of posts, and the outlook is not good, or at least the possible solution not simple or short from a time perspective.
I have a 100 families awaiting their DVD they've paid for that they initially were told they'd have by mid-February. I've been telling everybody that they would have it - guaranteed - by this weekend when there's a band festival that would be ideal for distribution. The DVD duplication company says they have to have it by Wed morning at the absolute latest. Meaning I've got about 24 hours to figure this out and burn my dual-layer masters of the two DVDs or once again tell people "I know I guaranteed you'd have it by this weekend, but I don't have it ready yet."
Almost as importantly, I can't afford to keep spending the hours and hours and hours on this that I have. It's impacting my personal and professional life.
Thus the primal scream.
The posts I read about the encoding failure all pretty much advise that I use AME to do all the transcoding work. Which of course brings me squarely back to my original problem: I cannot get a video file out of AME.
I'm embedding a screenshot of what I see when I click on the pull-down menu in the AME dialogue window. The problem: there is no MPEG2-DVD option listed to be chosen.
Although I'm relatively new to forums, I've read enough posts by now that it seems like most people are in crisis mode when they post. So I realize my situation is not all that unique. But from a newbie rookie in the field to you experts, I REALLY could use some assistance right now, because between this and the long, cold winter we've had, I'm about to lose it.  :-)
P.S. Mark, in answer to your question about frame rates, I have 18 different videos/films/projects that I'm including in my two DVD-set. There have probably been nearly 6-7 different cameras that have contributed footage to one or more of those films by borrowing camcorders of different brands and types and quality levels from people. Nearly every one of those 18 films have multi-camera sequences in them. And many films are collections of sequences which themselves are "nested sequences" sometimes three deep.  In otherwords, there is no way I can tell you all the various frame rates that may be represented among these 18 separate projects and I certainly can't go back and hope to change them all to the same one.
Help. Please.  :-)