Im confused. When you capture from an HDV camera isnt the extension type usually .m2t?
How come my captures are extension type .mpeg?

Im using Canon XHA1 with premiere pro CS3.

Just wondering cause the client is asking for .M2T files... and well, did i do something wrong?

An m2t file is a transport stream; an mpg file is (usually) a program stream. Transport streams carry extra error correction and are used when data is being transmitted e.g., by satellite or - in the case of HDV cameras - down firewire cables. Program streams are typically used for playback from physical media, like DVDs.

Visually transport streams are identical to program streams, and there is software (e.g. MpegStreamclip) that can losslessly mux from one to the other.

Some software (e.g Procoder and probably MpegStreamclip) will tell you which type of file you have. If your files have been captured directly from the camera, chances are they are transport streams and you can simply manually change their extensions to m2t.

This brings up another question: what exactly happens at the time of capture?

I suspect that capturing with HDVSplit is simply copying the content of the tape to the hard drive, but what is happening when capturing directly into an NLE?

I just checked with what I have available here .... when I take the .mpeg file that CS3 generates by 'capturing' HDV from the camera and load that into Procoder, Procoder reports that it's a transport stream.

All the parameters that Procoder reports seem to be identical to those for a raw .m2t file imported from the same camera using Cineform's HDLink.

Hope that helps.