DV card or FireWire card?

[PsychoBoy]

hi all, I am very new to video capturing. I have a DV cam and I wish to capture the video and convert it to VCD format. I have yet to get myself a DVcard or firewire card to do the job.
I want to find out, what are the difference between a DV card and a firewire card in terms of video capturing? which is better? and what makes it does the job better?

Thank you.

[Rich927]

What you need is a Firewire card. There's a lot of them out there. Most come with software that can get you started. you will need a large Hard drive as most Firewire cards capture in .avi format which creats large files. 30 minutes of capture can take up around 6 to 8 Gigs. once your files are captured, you can edit and then convert to a MPG format that will take up less space.

[bertmartin]

Firewire is a DV card. Its my understanding that Firewire was a Mac interface originally and the interface was adapted by IEEE as a standard. It is called IEEE 1394 which is the same as firewire. I got an Adaptec 1394 card and it came with some DV software (VideoWave LE) which I have since replaced. As long as the card meets the IEEE 1394 standard it should be ok. I wouldn't get the Pinnacle DV card since it seems to be a little non-standard from what I have here around the boards. I don't think you will go wrong with Adaptec although there are cheaper cards.