Firewire Card with DV software

[Will Rickards WT]

I'm looking to buy one of these and wondered if you guys had any thoughts. Original SR thread is here.

What do you think of Orange Micro's cards?
Anybody have any thoughts on the DV Software?
Should I buy the USB 2.0 + Firewire combo?

I'm going to use it with a Sony MiniDV camcorder.
Just basic video editing like taking only the parts I want and putting them together and maybe onto a CD.

 

[Tea]

Not my area, but I did sell a few Hercules ones a while back, and my customers were very happy with them. I forget the model now, and they are no doubt replaced by something else already, but they retailed for around AU$190 - i.e., maybe $90 in the US.

 

[flagreen]

For software - the quality and features of Adobe Premier are hard to beat. It is an expensive program however ($600). The cheapest way to get it is through buying a bundle. I use a Pinnacle DV200 which came with Premier 6.0 for a little under $300.00. It works fine in Win 9X or 2K but Pinnacle has no driver or software for XP. Win XP and XP Pro recognize the card as a TI IEEE1394 card and installs it's native driver for it which works fine. The DV 200 has both a Firewire input and S-Video connection. It comes with the cable you'll need to connect to your camera's I-Link port I think, don't really remember where I got the cable now. I'm using XP Pro and this arrangement works perfectly. I have also used it with Win 2K and 98SE with equally good results. The only drawback is Pinnacle's lousy support.

 

[.Nut]

A USB-2 + Firewire combo card is an excellent way to go, though you won't (likely) use the USB-2 port for video purposes. Some of these "deluxe" USB-2 + Firewire cards come with a "free" basic DV editing software package that will allow you to produce a basic video production. You should check to see what the basic software bundles are that come with the various USB-2 + Firewire cards. From what I recall, I believe the retail package version (as opposed to the cheap "white box" version that only has the card) of the Adaptec USB-2 + Firewire card comes with some decent basic DV software tools.

The USB-2 port can be used to interface any USB device such as storage devices and electronic still cameras. Unlike USB (version 1.x), USB-2 is pretty fast. So, its not a bad idea to have at least one USB-2 port around. USB-2 ports will soon be included on all new mobos, phasing out USB V1.x ports forever.