As a native Spanish speaker I would say: there's no difference in colloquial Spanish. e.g. Comencé a estudiar español / Empecé a estudiar español (there's no difference about the meaning of the sentence, people are gonna understand your sentence) Ya comenzó el verano / ya empezó el verano = the meaning is the same Ya comienza la película / Ya empieza la película I think even grammatically they don't have differences, both talk about "to start something"

There isn't any different between both, additionally to those the correspondent ending would be: Comienzo / Final, and Empiezo / Termino.

Both have the same meaning. There is not difference in most cases.