The project: I'm going to record old films (super-8) to my computer.I'm using an analog video camera and a tv-card. Output via graphicscard's tv-out. The goal is to save these 20 - 40 years old films, keep them for the future, edit them, put them on videotapes today, in a few years time I'll want to create dvd's.
Computer: AMD Athlon XP1700, 512 RAM. Jetway's nVidia GeForce FX5500, hauppage tv-card (bttv module), lots of diskspace.
After lots of experimenting I finally chose the recording program & format:
streamer in text-mode, .AVI-format with mjpg, 768x576, 96 - 100% quality.
It all started out well, I have a few recorded movies to test editing with. Now the fun begins...
Using Mandrake 9.1 I could edit them with MainActor and Broadcast2000. I removed Mandrake, have installed several other distro's - but no editing program can read my films! Using several distro's, default installation with all multimedia they have,
* cinelerra can't read - needs Quicktime??? These are not quicktime movies?
* kino, kdenlive, lives - "unrecognized file"
* MainActor v5 - might recognize, but immediate segfault. MainActor 3.7 doesn't run at all.
* broadcast2000 - no output, silent crash.
(Don't remember all distro's tried, but some are Suse9.1 Pro, Mandrake10.1, DeMuDi, WhiteBox, Ubuntu...)
There is no problem playing the movies (using mplayer).

What is the problem, what am I to do?
* Is the format I have chosen a bad choice, if so what should I use? It has taken me almost a year to be able to make a choice (I'm not a multimedia-person, I'm supposed to be in the machine-room!). Maybe it's too old? I can't afford to buy a digital camera, have to use my old analog.
* Is 768x576 a bad choice? It seems as one film, recorded at 384x288 at least gives me a preview in MainActor and Lives before crashing? But that's what TV uses, right? (PAL system)
(Maybe I need a better CPU, seems some frames are dropped.)
Any suggestions, please before I go completely crazy (the kids objects against this, they say "you can't become what you already are... hmmmz).