Originally Posted by rock-reed

After reading all of the above comments...

1) You can for sure capture on external drives... no problem... I have been doing it for years.
2) The laptop is definitely fast enough to capture.
3) You don't need 7200 or sometimes even 5400, I have Successfully captured DV to internal laptop drives running 4200rpm many times before with no dropouts.

This isn't drop-out --- its hard to explain what it is...

I am going to try these two things from the suggestion above...

capture to the internal hard drive of the laptop
and
close every single program down besides the cap. software

If the problem persists...it may be something with the 1394/cap drivers...
And I will post a clip of what the video looks like.
I am sure...someone has seen it before.

Thanks again!