Just a question, how are you connected from the IO to the Beta deck?
The AJA IO LA has both Composite and Component, with Component being the better of the 2.
Personally I have a G-Raid 2 and an OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro and both have been great with DV, DVCPro HD & XDCam.
A friend has started a simple DV project using a NewerTech Voyager Quad Docking station. Its a little box that can sit just about anywhere with Quad interface and an internal drive inserted into it. I laugh every time I see him editing on it, but it works for him for about $100 and whatever size drive you want to use with it.
Try this,
In System Settings / Scratch Disks
check that the Limit Capture Now To is correctly set or unchecked.
also check the Limit Capture/Export File Segment Size.
As to the timecode issue, I remember some older Hi8 cameras from Sony did not record timecode where as the Digital 8 cameras usually did. I believe its the difference between Analog Hi8 and Digital 8.
There are lots of ways to do this. The good old fashioned way would be to duplicate your video clip to a layer directly above, go to Effects / Video Filters / Matte and apply a Mask Shape or a garbage matte, add Mask Feather if needed, and add a blur filter to the top layer. Keyframe the matte filter to follow the text.
You could also send the clip to Color. Check out the video tutorial by Richard Harrington. Gave me lots of ideas.
We also export a Full mono Mix for Track1 and then a Nat/music mono mix for track 2. We then place that audio on the duplicated sequence and set our audio for the sequence as Dual Mono in Sequence Settings. The reason we set the audio is because sometimes we place Nat Only on track 3 and Music only on track 4. This way our workflow is always the same even if there is no ISO Nat or Music. Since tracks 1 & 2 are already routed we just route track 3 to output 3 and track 4 to output 4 when the additional audio is needed.