Editing Captured Video - Novice

[wackybadger]

I think this is the right place to post this. If not, my apologies.

I'm generally new to capturing/editing video, hence this post with all my questions. I have a Hauppage WinTV-PVR-USB2 that captures from my digital cable. It is connected to my Inspiron 9100 laptop (P4 3.2GHz, 1MB RAM). Most often I'll be recording sporting events. What I'd like to do is 2-fold: 1) edit out the commercials and burn the entire game to DVD with the appropriate menus, chapters, etc. and 2) make clips of just the scoring plays/highlights etc. The finished products would mainly be for viewing on a computer, probably not on a TV. When I record my options are as follows:
-DVD Long Play
-DVD Standard Play
-MPEG1 VCD
-MPEG2 2.0MBit/sec
-MPEG2 2.0MBit/sec (HalfD1)
-MPEG2 12.0MBit/sec
-MPEG2 12.0MBit/sec (CBR)
-VCD Long Play
-VCD Standard Play

I believe the max file size for recording something is 4GB before it creates a new file. So I've been recording using MPEG2 2.0MBit/sec. Then I find out I can't edit this file in Windows Movie Maker (dragging it to the timeline places it on the audio timeline only). My questions are:

1. What is a good format to capture in (for editing afterwards and considering what I want to do to the file)?
2. What program(s) should I use to accomplish this editing? I think I can make an .AVI file from my MPEG2 file but the AVI file is almost 40GB. Is this the way to go?

Thank you for all of your help.

[mugatea]

why not compress the file to divx!

jamie

[wackybadger]

Originally Posted by mugatea why not compress the file to divx! jamie

Essentially, I have no idea what I'm doing. How do I compress to divx? What do I need to be able to do this?

[mugatea]

Go to divx. You can download a free trial of their software at divx.com