As someone who is relatively new to dealing with video some of the basic concepts around what the various Matrox etc bits of hardware do is a bit confusing for me so I expect some of what I want to do may be easier once i understand a bit better, but this is what I’d like to do:

1. Record an HD video stream with audio
2. Be able to preview and playback the video after recording in a low resolution, frames dropped etc here is a fine.
3. Once confirmed having watched the preview, render the video @ HD quality with synced audio.

Can anyone help me with this generally?

As far as I understand things so far: I can use some hardware using either firewire or express card slot to record uncompressed HD video to the harddrive to ensure I do not drop and frames creating sync problems once the video is confirmed as being ok and audio is added.

The final video will need to be compressed but stay at HD quality without syncing problems or frames dropped. Is there someway to in parallel, capture each individual frame in nonrealtime for the purpose of the final render once confirmed, and at at the same capture the recorded stream in a more lightweight format for the purpose of the immediate preview?

Thanks!

Crabhands