I am a noob at video authoring, and I'm having trouble getting the audio to sync in shows I've captured from my DVR. After encoding and authoring, the audio starts in sync on the DVD, but is badly out of sync (1/2 a sec) by the end of the disc.

I frequently hear people mention audio sync problems, so I just don't know if this is the nature of the beast, or if my computer is too slow, or if I'm using the wrong software or what.

Here are my details.

Equipment:
Time Warner DVR
Sony camcorder (about 3 1/2 years old)
Dell Inspiron Laptop: 1.6 GHZ Solo Core, 1 GB RAM, Pinnacle Studio 8 for capturing and encoding

Process:
The video goes from the DVR to the camcorder via the RCA jack, and audio via the red/white audio jacks. The audio/video stream then goes from the camcorder to my laptop via firewire. In Pinnacle, I capture the audio/video. I save about three 25-minute shows un-encoded. Then in Pinnacle I create a simple menu and add all three shows (with a chapter stop for each). I trim a few frames here and there to make things pretty, but I never separate the audio from the video in Pinnacle. I have to go with about 80% quality to get all three episodes to fit. Then I let the laptop encode overnight, and I burn the disc the next morning.

I've seen in some cases where a retail DVD will go out of sync on a DVD player. In my experience that can always be fixed with stopping the DVD and resuming from the same spot. However, that doesn't work with these audio sync problems.

Any ideas what's happening here?

Thanks!