Santa was good to me. I have a Digital8 Sony TRV230 camcorder, DLink firewire card, Apex 1500 DVD player and a Philips DVD+RW burner. Now, I want to take our old 8mm tapes and pump them through the digital camera and onto CDR or maybe DVD+RW. But my main problem is this: AVI format sucks with it's 2 gig limit. What magical program can I get into that allows me to push play on my camera, record in the magical application... record 2 hours of DV....edit the video and then output to TMPGEnc quality SVCD format? (Basically, an ALL-IN-ONE, one stop shop type application)If this "magical program" can't convert the video to a nice quality SVCD (so far, I think TMPGEnc kicks the pants off anything else for quality) what program will accept the monsterously huge AVI file(s) and convert them to SVCD? Can any of these packages do what I need: ULead Media Studio? Adobe Premiere? Something from Pinnacle?! Can TMPGEnc handle multiple AVI files and is smart enough to combine them? Maybe AVI_IO or Virtualdub will make the multiple AVI files I need...but what about editing them? If I have to give up the edit feature, no BIG deal but I'd like to have that ability. So go with AVI_IO or VD with my multiple AVI files but how do I make TMPGEnc accept these multiple files and spit out a single, perfectly synched SVCD mpg?! Also, any limit on SVCDs? Can I put a 4 hour SVCD onto a DVD+RW w/no probs? Maybe I'll just stick with MyDVD and dump the Digital8 footage straight to DVD+RW and make exact copies that way?!?! Speaking of MyDVD (shipped with me DVD+RW burner)...the audio doesn't work. Any ideas? I can get audio from my tapes via firewire in VegasVideo 3 and Adobe Premiere but not in MyDVD 3.0. Any ideas? Well, sorry for the long message but I'm desperate for help. If you can, please respond here or via email at john1290@hotmail.com

PS Should I buy a "high grade" firewire cable? My $30 DLink card came with one but I've seen the average price for the premium firewire cables in the $30-$50 range. Worth it?

Thanks!