ATI Conversion - Please Help!

[CW]

I purchased my DVD recorder over a week ago and have been
researching daily on how to make just a 15 minute DVD and am
at my wits end. I have an ATI Radeon card and can capture video
just fine. Of course, none of the software I have tried to author DVD with accept the "MP2" extension. I have tried changing the extension to .mpg
and put it in "MyDVD" program. It says it is not acceptable but will
convert it - It seems to convert okay for a while and then when it hits the
audio conversion - it freezes.

Tried Virtual Dub but with a clip that's 15 minutes long, it freezes in the middle and says there is an error.

I have been able to get both methods to work on a 30 second clip though.

I know I need to do some upgrading on my system, but before I spend any
more money would like to spend it on what will help the most.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!!

[CW]

Found some info about some Virtual Dub fixes:
One thing that is happening is my monitor
goes to sleep during the capture and I should disable
power saving features in control panel to prevent this.

Maybe my problems will be solved with something
this simple. I will try it when I get home.

Thought I would add this info. in case another newbie
may have the same problem. (I apologize if this is
"old news" to those of you who are more experts
than I am at this.)

Would appreciate though your experiences on converting
the .mp2 files AVI makes to something useful and
which software programs seem to work best with
the Radeon when burning DVDs.

Thanks again!