Two questions for you (at end of post):

Background:
I've got a system to design as part of my work (medical imaging - archiving to DVD), unfortunately it has a number of constraints:

1) Automatically trigger multi-session real-time capture from s-video source. This will be done by remote control so *no manual editing or intervention whatsoever* - i.e. no GUI MMI. I don't need to see the video in real time - just capture.
2) Low-spec PC motherboard (therefore HW MPEG capture? - yes, I know I could get better quality from software compression).
3) Automatic transfer to DVD (for playback on standard off-the-shelf players).

Current system: Duron 1600, 256MB RAM, 7200rpm HD, AverMedia EZMaker Gold PCI (SA7134 Chipset), SuSE Linux 8.2. I'm also a newbie to DVD so any pointers as to what I might be doing right or wrong would be a very great help!

Here are my two questions:

A) so far I've used ffmpeg to capture, - can I configure ffmpeg (or other recommended software/commands?) to capture to HD or DVD directly from the HW compressed PCI card output?

B) i've read that the SA7134 chipset requires an updated kernel (2.4.23+) and patches and modules. I don't believe my new install of SuSE 8.2 has any of these, but my capture card appears to work on XawTV, KVDR, etc. Why? Am I missing something and would I get better performance by updating?

Any other comments or advice would be very greatly appreciated.

Thanks, GB.