I would think usb 1.0 would definitely be one. If you want maximum resolution and max. frame rate then nothing less than usb 2.0 will do. So what kind of video (digital or analog) is your friend working with?
I'm helping a certain relative who wants to do video on his budget PC. It has 256 RAM and 1.2 Ghz, so (I thought) it would suffice. After convincing him that he needed a firewire port we found that only one port can be used at a time. He can capture bad video through his USB 1 port to his external drive using firewire, or he can capture via firewire to his internal drive -- he cannot do both simultaneously. I can on a notebook with 900 Mhz.
So, I'd like to know what would be the first (and second, etc.) thing to check or upgrade. The motherboard? Chipsets? Where could the bottleneck be?

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