I've built a system for my sister - who wants to give video editing a try. I'm having some problems with capturing video and would appreciate any insight.

Here is the system I've built: Athlon 3200 XP with 1 GB of RAM, a 40GB EIDE HDD for Windows XP Home Edition SP2 and an 80 GB EIDE HDD for video editing work. Video card is an nVidia 5900 w/ 128MB. Video capture is the Pinnacle systems Dazzle 90 (NTSC), the software is Studio v9 SE. The Dazzle 90 connects to the PC via USB 2.0 connection. All video input right now is from an analog camcorder.

When capturing video via the Dazzle 90 / Pinnacle studio we find a large percentage of dropped frames. I believe the CPU / RAM of this system is more than adequate for this type of video capturing work; likely the 80GB EIDE drive can't write fast enough to accomodate capturing the analog video. Additionally, the Dazzle USB capture device may not be fast enough of an interface (though you'd think Pinnacle wonuldn't sell a model that couldn't really work fast enough).

Q: Is the 80GB EIDE dedicated drive the problem?
Q: Is the USB Dazle 90 the problem?
Q: Should I use an internal Pinacle video board instead of the Dazzle 90?
Q: Should I add a Raptor SATA 10,000RPM drive to the system for video capture?

Any help from more experienced members is appreciated. Thanks.