Video Disc capture and creation help?

[Dr. M. Burek]

OK, guys... I got a problem here.

I'm trying to capture and otherwise do what I need to to make a SuperVCD 
or a DVD from VHS tape. I am trying to capture 1 hour TV shows to 
archive to disc, as many of my VHS tapes are now getting to the age 
where disintegration of the tape will soon become an issue.

Ideally, what I'd like to do is create SVCD's now, but convert them to 
DVD later, when finances permit the purchase of a DVD burner and the 
amount of media I'll need for this.

The problem is, I am not very proficient with Macs yet. I have extensive 
PC experience, but my PC is not good for this project, as it crashes 
everytime I try to capture, edit, or encode.

My setup: a Power Mac 7300 with a Sonnet G3/400, an IBM 9.5 GB SCSI-2 
drive and the original Apple 2 GB SCSI-2 drive. For capture, I have a 
Formac PCI ProTV II card, and for burning an external Yamaha CD-RW 
CRW4416SX SCSI drive. This drive is great, if a tad slow (4x4x16). It 
works natively under iTunes, Disc Burner in both OS 9 and OS X 10.2.6.
I have OS 9.1 installed in two partitions on the 2 GB drive - one for 
booting to, and one for Classic under OS X. I have Jaguar 10.2.6 on the 
9.5 GB drive, with about 7.5 or so free space. I have copies of Toast 
5.2 (OS 9 and OS X versions), Toast 6.1, Final Cut Pro 2 and 3 (Classic 
and X, where appropriate) QuickTime Pro 6 in both Classic and X, along 
with other apps (gotten from a Mac guru friend who had more copies than 
he knew what to do with, and was glad I was getting into Macs).

So anyway, my problem is, what do I do now? I have no idea as to:

Capture resolution/size
compression to use (QuickTime, MPEG A/B, ?)
audio settings, compression, bitrate, etc.
desktop monitor video settings (currently at 1024x768, thousands - using 
the 7300's onboard video w/ 4 MB VRAM)
after capture procedures (edit, render, encode, etc)

I want to capture 1 hour source from VHS tape to SVCD, editing out 
commercials, then creating fully compliant SVCD to play in computers (PC 
and Mac) as well as set top boxes. Capture file sizes MUST be small 
enough to fit into remaining free space (7-7.5 GB), hopefully with some 
free space left over for working with the files. Audio must remain in 
sync in the finished product, of course.

I am probably going to use the applications that came with the Formac 
card to capture, but it is so "simplified" that the needed settings are 
not easy to figure out. This card does work in OS 9.1 AND OS X, with 
drivers from Formac. The OS X app, however, does not let you specify the 
capture size - you can only click and drag the corner of the window to 
change size, which is very imprecise. The Classic version does let you 
specify sizes, however. I would prefer to do the capture in Classic to 
maximize my processor resources (less overhead in Classic than in OS X) 
to keep dropped frames to none, or just a few.

I would prefer to keep the quality as high as possible, considering the 
source is VHS at EP speed.

Can anyone help me with this? I would prefer NOT to spend any more money 
on this project if I can help it.

Thanks