Here's an update. I ended up trying GoldWave and Audacity audio editors, IFOedit and Rejig and VOBEdit all to "demux" (slit audio and video streams) on the .avi files I had. The results were nothing i could recognize (maybe a few seconds of noise or total silence, or no file at all).
Finally, i found a small application (PM me for details) that will take any video file and analyze the streams, describe the details like fps and file format. When i ran the .avi files i found that there IS NO SEPERATE AUDIO STREAM! I dont know why this is (yet) but suffice to say that it has something to do with the recorder adding the audio into the video stream OR something to do with the way it was captured onto my computer.
Frustrated, i went back to my video project to do some more work. Lo and behold, there is an option in the right-clickable menu (right-click on the file when it is in the library (Roxio Movie Creator)) to strip the audio from the video clip!!!!!!! Worked like a charm, but i learned a few things along the way, too.
Thanks again for the tips,
UJ