qt7, imovie, mped1/2/4 and more

[sinclair_tm]

ok folks, i need some help with video files. my sig lists my mac's config. i've got ilife5 and qt7. i have some old family vhs tapes i want to make into dvd. as you can see my mac isn't the fastest in the world, but i'm used to slow macs, i was running 10.2.8 on a 8600, so this g4 was a big upgrade for me. i want to use imovie and idvd to make the dvds because i like the control i have over the finished product. i also have a amd athlon 3200+ xp oc to 2.32, with 512mb dual channel ram, 160hd and nvidia 6600 128mb vid card, win xp sp2. much faster. it also has a superdrive, but i hate the sw that i have for it. i found a vid capture card on sale for it ($40). the sw for it is powervcr2. it captures in mpeg1/2. qt doesn't do mpeg2 w/out the $20 plug in. so i tryed mpeg1, and qt playes it fine, but in imovie there is no sound. i tryed downloading mediapipe , but it chrashes right away. i then tryed ffmpegx . it could open and play the mpeg2, but when i set it to MPEG4[.MOV](ffmpeg) all i got was a .mov files that played as long as the mpeg2 file, but no sound and just a white screen. so what can i do? i'm open to any free sw that i can download for mac or win xp that will convert the mpeg2 videos into one that i can import into imovie with video and sound. other then that i'll have to buy a Miglia AlchemyTV DVR pci card from macsales.com or buy the qt mpeg2 plugin. then will the plug in work on windows qt6 and mac qt7? do i need qtpro to get it to convert to something imovie will use, or will imovie convert it for me with the plugin? my goal has been mpeg4 because my kodac digital point and shoot also does mpeg4 video and i have not had a problem using those in imovie. so if anyone has had this problem and solved it, please help. got a family thing next summer i'd like to have some dvds done for, and at 466mhz, it will take most of that to encode and burn the dvds (lol).