No, that sounds just about right. You should be getting a little over 1GB/minute. Capturing AVI from that card will be uncompressed. If you wish, you can render it as DV after you've captured and it will shrink to 225MB/minute with no visible loss of quality. You can then delete the original huge file. As an added bonus, Vegas works much more efficiently with DV files than with uncompresssed.
Correct, choose AVI file format and the NTSC DV or PAL DV (Depends on your region) template when rendering. I am in the same boat and do this all the time. You can also do some minor editing like syncronizing the Audio (ATI is notorious for sync problems), choping off the garbage at the beginning and end of the clip, cutting out commercials (TV capture), etc... You should do these in this order. Render it to DV, delete the big file and then you can capture more files if needed. When you have the DV AVI, you can then do transitions, special effects, to your hearts' desire without degradation.
Are there any analogue capture cards (with video out as well)out there with which Vegas would compress capture? Any you would recommend that are not too expensive?
Chienworks
I am a little confused as to how you render captured clips. In VF I have rendered completed movies by using the 'make movie' button. However if I render before doing anything to the captured clips (let's say 50 of them) do I render each clip separately or is there some way of doing the job en masse?
zbig
I would render each one individually to NTSC DV .avi (or PAL DV .avi, depending on where you are on the planet). As you complete each render and check the new DV clip to make sure it's ok, you can delete the original capture. You can also trim the clips at this point if you have any extra footage that you know you won't be using. Also, if you know a clip is definately going to need some adjustment such as brightness, saturation, cropping, etc., now is the time to do it as it will save you lots of time later.