I currently have an external capture card I bought from Aldi and it has worked fairly well for me so far. I did run into a problem with it though. Whenever I would transfer anything if it went over 1/2 hour, the audio would slowly un-sync from the video. Now, is this a problem with the card, the software, my computer (which was relatively weak at the time, XP 32 bit, 256 MB of RAM), or a combination of? I have yet to try it on my new computer which is at least 4X more powerful than the last one. If you suspect it is the card, which kind (internal/external)/one would you recommend? I'm running 64bit Vista w/ 4 gigs of RAM, overall a fast computer. Is the Dazzle one any good? Thanks!
Get an internal tuner card with built-in mpeg encoder. That will get rid of your audio sync problems. With a tuner card with hardware encoders, the cpu isn't that important. The tuner card will encode the video/audio on the tuner card itself. Happagauge makes good tuner cards. They have externals with built-in mpeg encoders but usually cost twice of the internal cards. I use the PVR150 (old model) in 3 years have never had an audio sync problem, even on 3 hour long recordings. With a fast computer even a software encoder tuner card should keep video/audio in sync, unless you have a problem with the soundcard or your trying to multitask while recording (something that won't affect the hardware encoders).
