just a quick update; I copied an avi captured onto another machine and it played fine. No choppiness or breaking video. Does anyone know what would cause the poor play of the avi on my main pc? Could it be the avi codecs on my machine? Could it be the sound card, I have onboard sound? Could it be another installed program? Finally, will this effect the conversion to MPEG-2? Thanks, any help would be appreciated.