well I AM a newbie, but this is a capture question so I'll post here.

First, I'd like to say that I did read the 4 page capture video thread by AT below. most of it is way over my head and as a newbie I need a clean/simple starting point.

Here's what I have:
Radeon 64 VIVO, MMC7.1, Pen3 1gig, 512 MB RAM, 12gig HD free.

Here's what I've tried:
1. AVI format: works fine but not very useful to me.
2. MMC7.1 VCD format: smooth process. Looks OK on the pc, BAD on the Apex660.
3. MMC7.1 mpg1 format, easy to use, OK files. Plays on the Apex OK but the picture does not occupy the entire display, there is about a 1 inch "margin" on the left side where I can see the apex blue background and there is an annoying flicker there too.
4. MMC7.1 "High quality" setting in digital VCR: good looking MP2 file. looks great on the PC. Will not play on my Apex660. Tried renaming file to mpg extension. Apex will recognize it and it *seems* as thought the picture quality could be great but output is distorted (dimensions are wrong, rectangular top half and not full screen wide.) Tried burning the renamed file as VCD using Nero. Error message about the file format, burn failed.

It seems to me that option 2 above (MPG1) would be the best/easiest starting point for me. But what settings do I use to improve quality and get rid of that margin? (my first attempt setting was 640X480 525 lines, I tried things like "I frames", increasing motion detection to 100 and am not sure if I caused the margin problem) I don't know what to do with the bitrate slider and some of the other check boxes available.
The other option would be to capture in MPG2 and then "convert" to MPG1, but I dont know if this would be a better option or how to do it.
I do hope to eventually produce VCD format CDs, but since the Apex seems to play straight mpg files fine, I don't see the advantage to placing a high priority on the VCD conversion.
I'd appreciate any input/pointers. thanks