I have been attempting to build a editing shop for over a year with the
below hardware and software and others but am still unsatisfied. A few
observations.

XP was totally unsatisfactory due to lockups and program aborts. Moving
between hardware boxes didn't make much difference (I have a dozen or so
available.) Changing to Win2000 fixed a lot of that stuff, but not all.
Linux is much more stable but so far there is very little quality video
editing available - certainly nothing polished like Studio 8 - so I am
sticking with Windows till and if that situation changes. Yes, I know
that all the pro rendering shops use Linux, but the software is homegrown
by teams of programmers and I have no access to it.

The AIW 9000 captures much better than the AIW 7500, a couple of Avery
cards I have tried and a USB capture box that I can't remember the name
of. I have a new Adaptec USB Videoh USB2 which seems to work very well
but I have not used it enough yet to say.

The major problem with the AIW series is the built in Macrovision
detection which is a MAJOR headache. The reason for it is obviously to
try to prevent the capture from DVDs and pre-recorded tapes (it doesn't)
but it will also detect any less-than-perfect VHS data streams, decide
that you are a pirate, and trash the input. I had to use a SIMA sync
inserter to fix that problem. The Adaptec apparently doesn't have that
problem - I hope.

Studio 8 is the best software that I have found from a usage standpoint.
Has a great and easy to use interface, but will unexplainably drop the
sound at random intervals - maybe once per movie, maybe 5 times. It will
also more than occasionally render an MPG that in which the sound will
gradually fall behind the video. And occasionally, at the interface of an
edit, insert a VERY loud metallic screech which will make you jump when it
hits. Again, I have multiple hardware to try it on and it does the same
thing on all of them.

The Sonic MyDVD fixes most of the problems with Studio 8 but is nowhere as
easy to use and Ulead is a disaster. MyDVD also will build a DVD/VCD with
the sound out of sync quite often.

So far I have had little luck unless I capture at the exact bit rate,
resolution, etc that I want to render at and almost none at producing
media of consistant quality.

So far, the best results have been to save the captured and and rendered
data as a MPG data file and just play it back through the TV card.

Anybody having any luck with the above?

Bill