Capture to an external hard drive or a second internal hard drive. Never capture to your primary hard drive. Also, I’ve been told the hard drive speed should be no slower than 7200rpm.
One hour of video is 12-13GB, although, I’ve also been told you don’t want to fill your hard drive more than half way because then it’s only working half as good. So for example, I wouldn’t fill a 500GB hard drive more than 250GB.
I believe dropped frames has to do with the speed of your drive. If you’re talking about drop out, which is when some pixels are like, not there and look like the color of rainbows kinda, then that has to do with having dirty heads in your camcorder or deck.
You need firewire as well.
