How do you judge if a video capture is good? Dropped frames?
 

Can the quality of a capture be judged purely on the number of frames dropped or does it require viewing of the file to get an idea of quality?
I assume the ideal is zero dropped frames but how often is this achieveable and does this even mean the capture is good?
Is there a point during a capture that the number of dropped frames makes it pointless to continue?
Is it feasible to capture "blind" return after and hour or two and make a judgement, based on the information the capture software provides, on whether it worth keeping the file based on dropped frame information?
Finally is there anything that must be done at the capture stage, assuming the recommended settings from the site guides are applied (for say mpeg2), that can't be corrected later in software?

Any advice appreciated.

I'm no pro by any stretch of the imagination but I'd say you have to watch the file to get an idea of the quality. You of course want 0 dropped frames, I've never had any so I can't say how it effects the video but I assume it does to some point. Even if it is 1 or 3.

Yes. The file may be jerky if it more than 2-3 per hour.

I almost never get dropped frames.
It may be the computer, the audio card, the capture card, the software, or the competing running programs pulling on the CPU.
I need to know more about the system to guess/troubleshoot.

I stop mine if it's more than 2-3, or if it isn't dropping because of an obvious bad spot on the tape. I have a stack of tape hat I'm just going to redo next week. Had to rebuild the computer. It started to drop frames after many years of use. The CPU was toast, I think, so into the trash it went.

I check every 10-15 minutes.

Depends on what it is. Some yes, some no.

A few frames won;t really affect it. ATI MMC drops audio with video, so there won't be skew. (Assuming that the card in use. Not sure. I'm guessing.) VirtualDub will skew.