Honest, I've done hours of research but can't find a clearcut answer to this. Hoping for some opinons/guidance.

I want to transfer my large family history library from analog 8mm to DVD for archival purposes. I have Sony 8mm analog camera, Sony 740 digital 8mm camera, ATI 8500DV & Aeolus Gforce TI4600 w/analog in, 60GB Raid 0 Drive, 120GB ATA drive dedicated for video files, XP 1800, EPOX 8K3A, 256 Meg DDR RAM, Videostudio 6 with all plugins, TMPGEnc. I plan to purchase a Sony 500A DVD recorder as soon as I figure everything else out and am ready to burn DVDs. Maintaining the Video Quality is my highest priority.

1) What format should I use to capture to my 120GB HD until I start writing DVDs? MPG2, 1, AVI, other?

2) What combination of hardware/software should I use? Put the analog tape in the digital camera and firewire it directly to MPG2, MPG1? Use an analog input to the AIW or Gforce card and save as an AVI file then use TMPGEnc to convert to an MPG2 or 1 file? Looking for suggestions.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.