i don't think that what i want to do should be too hard or unheard of... i just want to capture a 30-min tv show (scheduled), edit the commercials out, and convert to DivX. here is how i am trying it now with minimal success:

capture w/ ATI MMC 7.1 to mpeg2, 480x360, 6.0 mbit/s, audio at 44.1 khz, 16bit... this give me a *.mp2 file (best setting i could figure w/ less than 1% frame drop)

to convert to DivX:
1) tried flaskmpeg, 1300 cbr low motion divx, 128 mp3, default settings, selected each range of the show (in between commercials) and encoded individually, put them together in virtualdub, and i get audio sync problems
2) tried nandub sbc... made project w/ dvd2avi... extracted .mpa audio file which i renamed to .mp3 and reencoded to 128 kbps mp3... converted project to vfapi-avi, now the avi and mp3 are different lengths, off about 6 sec on a 6 min section.

any suggestions for a better way to capture that will make my conversion to divx easier? i am posting this in both the capture and conversion sections, hopefully someone has some ideas, thanks

-balance07