Why would you buy a high end capture card compaired to a cheeper end card? What benfiets do you get?

If by high end you mean one of the real time cards, you get real time rendering of all the effects in your video, saving you rendering time when you finish it. Not a big deal to all people, but gold to others. These cards are in the $800-$1200 range. Some of them include breakout boxes which allow a variety of inputs including analogue capture.

If instead you mean, something like a $300 capture card vs. a $30 capture card, it's pretty much the software package included that adds the extra price.

FWIW, I use a $25 capture card . There is no difference in captured picture quality between a cheap card and a $1200 card, in case you were wondering..

"you get real time rendering of all the effects in your video"

Well... maybe not "ALL" - some effects still need rendering and NOT in real time.

True.

It used to be a really big deal. When computers were a lot slower, the difference between a low end capture card and a "real time" card could be huge. These days it isn't as important.

I have a Canopus RexRT system which does great color correction, filters and keying in mostly real time. I also edit with Video Vegas using a low cost OHCI card.

These days I spend a lot more time editing using the OHCI card than I do the Rex not because of the card but because of software. I love Vegas which does about everything that I need, whereas the Rex card really only works with Premiere, which I find buggy and annoying.

I have wondered the same thing Tim. I just have a Western Digital 3 port firewire card which I think cost me like $30 bucks if I remember right. As for real-time previews, I use Premiere 6.5 that does that no matter what card I use. Plus I can use it to plug in other devices such as my external hard drive; the capture cards I have seen are strickly for cameras and will not see hard drives and other devices. If you can find a card that does something totally schweet that mine can't let me know. I'm sure all NLE apps can use my card and if it doesn't have real-time built in, I wouldn't be using it.

Please avoid the Canpous DV Raptor-RT. It's flaky even on a system conforming to the published HCL. I've ditched mine in favour of an OHCI card costs a tenth of the price. Many new mainboards include a firewire port, which should be good enough.