Hello all - new here, coming with a moderate amount of experience with video editing and conversion.

I know that on the consumer level, video encoding efficiency and speed depend on the processor(s) and pro level systems user dediecated hardware and servers.

So I get this Dell 420 with an ATI TV tuner and the companion "Xcelerator" - which basically brings the tuner and capture inputs to the front of the machine as well as take much of the load from the CPU during rendering. The downside is that, according to the documentation, only works with the Roxio software that came with the machine. I use Premiere Elements for editing. So my questions are:

1. Is there anyway to make Elements, or perhaps other editors take advantage of this hardware, or does that have to be written into the particular application?
2. Are there other addon cards or boxes that work universally with eidtors, or are there any that are designed for specific editors such as Vegas or Premiere?


Thanks in advance!