VeeshanVault

I can google til the cows come home on this, but I was wondering what kind of video capture/editing gear you guys recommend. Preferably something affordable. I'm not in the market for any of that all-in-wonder stuff either. I'm just looking for something that can capture from VHS, TV, camcorder, etc. Also, is Microsoft Movie Maker even an option, or should I not even bother, and get something better?

Did I mention I'm not an expert with this shit? The first thing I plan to do with it is put together something fairly major for a project I'm gonna have to do this coming semester.

I have a LeadTek WinFast TV 2000 XP Deluxe card, and I'm pretty happy with it. I wanted to play around with video capture, etc. and this card fit my budget and had fairly good reviews. Currently, it's priced at $45 at newegg.com:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 132&depa=0

I haven't done too much with it, but I've recorded a couple movies off TV and burned them to a DVD. The video quality was pretty good, but I have had problems with the sound quality. It always seems to record sound at a very high level, and it plays back very clippy. I dunno, maybe there's some settings i can monkey with to fix that, but I haven't spent too much time on it.

As far as Windows Movie Maker, I've used it and it's decent. Definitely not professional quality software, but it gets the job done. Since it's free, you may as well give it a try before you go out and spend money on something.

Software-wise: Adobe Premiere is a pretty standard application for video editing these days. If you wanted to take a step higher you can try Adobe After Effects. The high-priced sophisticated program though is Final Cut Pro, which is raving that it will replace AVID as the leading program for video editing.