Sorry but I think we got at cross purposes. What I was asking was what facilities has your digital camera. Why I asked was that my Canon can be used to convert analogue video to digital when capturing. This will save you a capture card. I play my old hI8 on a Sony Hi8 video recorder into the analogue in port on my camera then capture via firewire to the computer. It is possible to buy a converter that will do that job for a few pounds, but I have no experience of how good they are. Incidently my computer was the fastest thing you could buy 2 years ago but now is getting long in the tooth at 1900xp but it does the job. I have 2 80gig HDs and 1 meg of ram so you can see that what you have is more than good enough.

On the VIVO topic, I just got an Asus Radeon 9600XT for £140 with VIVO. The quality is fine and it's a very nice card although it is perhaps more than you need for what your doing, which isn't gaming. Still though, the VIVO capabilities are great for the price. Many Radeons have the rage VIVO chipset onboard, on a budget this is a good option to go for.

I'll back Mr ripling on the second hard drive advice too. One of the best things you can do for your system. Just buy a small one and install your OS on there and your programs on a seperate HD. You can never have enough physical hard drives, I got one for programs, one for swap file, one for OS, one for audio, one for video. Overkill? Naaah .

Also probably the best piece of advice I can give you, install a multi operating system setup. You say your kids wil be doing homework on it so I'd strongly suggest that you install one set of Windows (if indeed that's what your using) solely for editing use, otherwise I imagine you'll run into problems at some point. Partition your hard disk to have 1 partition for the boot sector, 1 for you editing OS, one for kids/internet etc. If this is all japanese and someone else is installing the OS, ask them to do this for you, it's not so hard.

Good luck

__________________
Who shares wins

Thanks for the advice guys. One or two other points you may be able to clear up for me are:- Is it OK to go for a radeon chipped video card if you have a Nvidia chipped mobo? I,ve read that you should stick with the same chipset. And on the subject of a second drive, would it be OK to have one SATA and one IDE?

I've heard a few complaints about A7N8X and radeon 9600 compatibility. You definately got the A7N8X standard version? There are many varients. The A7, being a current board 'should' work with any leading graphics card and you do get more bang for your buck with Radeon, just have a search around for compatibility before buying your card.

I beleive the standard A7N8X has only IDE controllers in which case you wouldn't be able to use a SATA drive in it unless you bought a SATA controller/convertor. I would recommend you do this. SATA controllers aren't expensive and SATA performs better than IDE.

__________________
Who shares wins

I've heard a few complaints about A7N8X and radeon 9600 compatibility. You definately got the A7N8X standard version? There are many varients. The A7, being a current board 'should' work with any leading graphics card and you do get more bang for your buck with Radeon, just have a search around for compatibility before buying your card.

I beleive the standard A7N8X has only IDE controllers in which case you wouldn't be able to use a SATA drive in it unless you bought a SATA controller/convertor. I would recommend you do this. SATA controllers aren't expensive and SATA performs better than IDE.

__________________
Who shares wins

I have the A7N8X Deluxe Version 2.0 which is SATA capable. And I have a 160GB Maxtor SATA hard drive.