Need file size help...

[etecnifibre]

First off, I've had a bunch of questions answered just by reading, but cannot find some answers. I think I may be on the right track, but some help would be very much appreciated. I'm trial and error'd out.
My system:
Gigabyte 7VRX Mb, 266 FSB
AMD Athlon XP 2200+
ATI AIW 8500 128MB
1GB PC2700 DDR RAM
Ulead Video Studio 7.0
I will be adding a DVD burner soon. Right now, I'm trying to figure out sizes of video.
My goal is to be able to record a college basketball game, roughly 2 hours, and transfer it to DVD. I won't be doing title pages or anything like that for it.
Here are some questions:
1)Should I capture with the TV program with my ATI, or is there a better program?
2)Should I capture at the highest quality (8Mbit/sec), open it in Ulead, edit out the commercials and then set the bitrate as high as I can go without exceeding 4.36Gb, or should I capture at around 4.8Mbit/sec and hope it comes in under 4.36GB?
3)Please tell me there is a simple mathetimatical formula I can use to determine what my file size will be depening on length and bitrate. If I have a basketball game that goes into overtime, I'm obviously not going to be able to go with the same bitrate as I would for a game that is 25 minutes shorter. Tell me if this is basically right...1Mbit = roughly 125,000 bytes. Just divide by 8, right?
4)Is the quality of a 4-6Mbit/sec video (basketball game with lots of motion) going to be good enough to put on a DVD without a total loss of quality, or am I wasting my time?
Sorry if I blew anyone's mind here, and thanks a ton for the help.

[etecnifibre]

One more question:
Let's say I capture at 8Mbit/sec, open in Ulead, edit out commercials, do the math to figure out the necessary bitrate in order to come in under 4.36Gb. Do I choose a constant bitrate, or variable bitrate? Also, what would I need to do with the audio? The default is set to 44100KHz, 224kbps.
Thanks once again.

[housepig]

1)Should I capture with the TV program with my ATI, or is there a better program?

usually the capture quality depends more on the quality of your hardware than your software, so the "better" capture application is the one that gives you the resolutions you like, and an interface you find comfortable. Download a few others - ATI might be the choice, but you might find one you like better.

2)Should I capture at the highest quality (8Mbit/sec), open it in Ulead, edit out the commercials and then set the bitrate as high as I can go without exceeding 4.36Gb, or should I capture at around 4.8Mbit/sec and hope it comes in under 4.36GB?

If you are capturing to mpeg-2, you don't want to edit and then reencode, you'll see a drop in quality. figure out how long your program will be once you edit out commercials, and capture at a rate appropriate for that time.

3)Please tell me there is a simple mathetimatical formula I can use to determine what my file size will be depening on length and bitrate.

click HERE and scroll down the page. Or download the Bitrate Calculator from the Tools section.

4)Is the quality of a 4-6Mbit/sec video (basketball game with lots of motion) going to be good enough to put on a DVD without a total loss of quality, or am I wasting my time?

Only you can decide that - what looks good to me might look unwatchable to you, and vice versa. I would suggest doing a short capture and seeing if that level of quality is acceptable.