Need help transferring audio from .mpg files

I figured this issue had to be discussed somewhere in the forum, but searched and wasn't able to find an appropriate answer. In hindsight, I suppose I should have done a bit more research before buying an iMac a few weeks ago when I had over 100gb of family videos in .mpg format (from a Sony video camera) on my old PC. And unfortunately, I wasted $20 last night on the Quicktime MPEG-2 playback component only to find that (like some of the reviews on the Apple website warned and I read AFTER buying) I can play the videos in Quicktime now, but can't hear the audio. Obviously I'm not very computer savvy (especially when it comes to Macs), so am having a hard time figuring out what to do next.

I downloaded VLC and can play all of the .mpg videos with that, but I'd like the ability to burn some of these videos to DVD via iMovie or iDVD. From what I've gathered, I can't do that (and transfer the audio to DVD) without using a program like MPEG Streamclip to convert the audio portion of the files. Is that correct? If so, is there an easier way to do it? Like maybe downloading a movie/DVD creation software that will work with .mpg files from my Sony video camera? QT Pro, Final Cut Express?

I haven't uploaded any of the video that's currently on the hard drive of my video camera because I'm guessing I will have the same issues. I'm hoping I don't need to get a new video camera that records in a different format. There has to be a way to do this without converting files every time I transfer video from my camera or want to put video on a DVD. Please help. Thanks much.

 

Thanks for helping, spinnerlys. I should have checked the model # before I posted, but am at work right now and don't remember off the top of my head. It's a 3-year old, 20GB hard drive model.

I'll try Movist tonight to see what codecs the files use. I realize that most video files need to be converted to be burned on a DVD, but I'm looking for a Mac program that will do that automatically with .mpg files without having to use MPEG Streamclip to convert the file to a .mov first. Example: on my old PC, I had an application called Sonic MyDVD that I could use to import the .mpg files from my PC's hard drive or directly from my Sony video camera, create a movie, and then burn it to a DVD. I can't do that with iMovie or iDVD because Quicktime won't transcribe the audio portion of the .mpg files. I have to convert the files to .mov format using MPEG Streamclip first and then import them into iMovie or iDVD. Doing this one at a time for hundreds of files would take forever. It took almost 10 minutes to convert a 2.5 minute video last night. I'm looking for a Mac application that I can use to create movies & DVDs without first converting the .mpg files or a codec for QT that will enable me to use iMovie/iDVD without prior conversion via MPEG Streamclip. Does that make sense?

 

Thanks, tbasaluda. I'll give WavePad a shot if I can't find a Mac application that will do what I want without converting the files.