Blackmagic Intensity Pro - Reducing 1920x1080 Captures to Lower Resolution

[Involuntary]

On Dish Network, we just upgraded from standard-definition receivers to the new Hopper 3 system that has, of course, high-definition capabilities. As a hobbyist, I like to capture short, interesting clips from television programs using my Blackmagic Intensity Pro video capture card, and I like to capture raw/uncompressed video to make my editing life easier in VirtualDub.

The satellite receiver is set to output 1080i video and the capture resolution settings in the Intensity Pro control panel and the Blackmagic Media Express capture program must match or I'll get a black screen in Media Express. In the Blackmagic Design Control Panel, there is a "select input processing" setting that allows conversion from 1080/720 HD straight to SD, but that's too extreme. I don't really want to capture full-blown 1920x1080 video clips; I'd rather just have the card capture them at about 960x540 or so, not go all the way down to standard definition, and also without having to set my satellite receiver to lower resolution outputs. Is there any way to do this?

I'm not sure if it's the hardware itself or what, but my old Hauppauge WinTV 404 card allowed you to just set your capture resolution to whatever you wanted it to be. While I love the Intensity Pro's HD capabilities and the Media Express software, it's somewhat inferior as far as capture flexibility goes.

Capturing at 1920x1080 and 59.94 frames per second, I was expecting to have a lot of dropped frames, but on my first test capture, amazingly enough, this hard drive actually managed to keep up perfectly on a 55-second clip! And when I got this drive, based on what I read, I didn't even think it could write data that quickly. A 55-second raw clip is 6.8 gigabytes.

I guess I should also mention my other concern, and it may be a silly or misplaced concern. Sometimes the clips I might capture are five or six minutes long, so what worries me with that is maybe toasting the drive way before its time. I'm kind of phobic about overworking hardware I can't easily afford to replace right now.

A general rundown on hardware is an Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z motherboard, 16GB of RAM, AMD-FX-6300 Vishera 6-core 3.51 GHz CPU, 64-bit system, Nvidia GTX 650 GPU, Windows 8.0, and the Intensity Pro.

Thank you for any input!

[KarMa]

Don't want to capture with huffyuv or lagarith? Can pretty much cut the file size down to half or a third, losslessly. Easy to edit too.

[Involuntary]

I'm not talking about the file size, just the dimensions of the video display itself. But I can tinker with capturing with the Huffyuv codec, I suppose, if I can manage to get something working decently in VirtualDub. My first attempt at getting the capture mode set up was not good. The feed from the capture card wasn't very good. It just showed a series of still images.