Like many people, I have some 8mm an HI8 tapes that I want to turn into DVDs. They are 15 sec. to 3-4 minute clips of the kids, on consecutive tapes (about 4-5 2 hour tapes). I also have a Canon Elura 40 DV camera and soem DV tapes. I would like to: (a) capture a 2 hour analog tape and create a DVD from it; and (b) capture the DV tape and create a DVD from it. I have plenty of HD space and 1GB RAM with a Pentium 4, 1.3Ghz (building a faster machine in a week or so with hyperthreading chip).

A friend gave me a Dazzle Mojave Card that came with his Dell and some MGI software, which does not get along with my system at all (the software). The Dazzle has firewire. Virtual Dub will NOT recognize it; Adobe Premier 6.0 will sometimes recognize it, especially when connected via firewire port. I have a bunch of questions:

(1) What is the best procedure for getting the analog tapes to DVD? I was going to buy the Canopus ADVC-100, but I believe that I can use the DV camera as an analog to DV converter to do the same job, thus avoiding that expense. Or, is it better to connect the analog HI8 camera to the analog inputs of the Dazzle, and NOT convert to DV?

(2) I successfully captured a 1 hour digital video (I think) .avi file from the DV camera which I connected via firewire using Premier. It is 13GB. I then started TMPGenc v. 2.59 to convert it. It has been runnning 8 hours and has 22 hours left! I set Rate Control to "2 pass VBR," used no filters, and Highest Quality. I selected MPEG-1 Audio Layer II, and Stream Type MPEG-2 Program(VBR). I am outputting an .mpg file with video + audio. There must be a better way. What is the best way to get from DV tapes to DVD.

(3) Is there a way to capture from the DV camera into MPEG-2 format, so conversion with TMPGenc is not necessary? I can only imagine how long a 2 hour capture would take.

(4) Since the Dazzle Mojave card that was given to me is not recognized by Virtual Dub, and only sometimes recognzied by Premier, what capture card should I get? If the best way to do this is to capture in digital video .avi format from the DV camera (using it to covnert the analog tapes), is anything other than a firewire connection even necessary? This, of course, goes back to question 1.

I am willing to buy the necessary capture hardware, since I am unhappy with the Dazzle Mojave Card. But I have no idea what to get. I was about to buy the Canopus, when I read that I could do the same thing with my DV camera, so that seems silly. But the covnersion from analog to DV to MPEG-2 takes, literally, days.

Any thoughts and help would be appreciated. I have read the various guides, but am looking for input from people with real world experience. Thanks.