New Firewire card vs new editing software

[dazed women]

I have the Canopus ADVC-100 and purchased the Adaptec FireConnect 4300 firewire card. The card came bundled with VideoWave4. IMHO, VideoWAve is a horrible program where everything I did created more problems and nothing worked.

An aside...
Since my computer was having problems, I decided to try and put a captured video back out to the VCR to record it back on tape. I just got a blank screen on the TV and tape. I hooked the RCA jacks in the output on the ADVC and had my VCR on Aux but no go. So I went to Adaptec's website (heard they had excelent support which is why I purchased this firewire card) and the site said it was the software in the "camera" GRRRR

So is it the firewire card? or in the ADVC (I know others have had no problems doing this) Or just my luck.

The original capture and everything else went fine except for 1) Software and 2) trying to output to video

So here is my options...

I am considering purchasing the ADS PYRO Digital Video 1394DV Firewire Card for about $60 to $70 which is bundled with Ulead Video Studio 6.0 and DVD Movie Factory. Or Pinnacle Express DV for about $40 which has Pinnacle Express in it. Or I can buy a different software for simple editing and encoding to MPEG2 and keep the Adaptec firewire card. I cannot return the card. It has been to long since I purchased it. Any suggestions on software would be appreciated.

I looked at Edit Studio but it requires QuickTime which is why my computer system became unstable and a mess. My DH likes Windows Media Player and QuickTime really conflicted with it. I had to totally reformat the hard drive but that is a different story.

I really want to spend less than $100. I don't have TMPEGenc full version which would be about another $50. But if I had software that was good at encoding to MPEG2 as well as TMPEGenc, I wouldn't have to add that expense on.

Any advice on new card vs different software would be much appreciated.

[Craig Tucker]

I just bought a cheap generic firewire card for £20 and even at this price it still came with ulead video studio. (pretty good software IMHO)

[alenhard]

as far as encoding goes, stick with tmpgenc- it'll be the best $50 you ever spend. edit with whatever you like best, but nothing will encode like tmpg (except CCE)!

[sterno]

I can't tell you what your problem is, but I can say that there are only a couple common firewire chips and almost all of the cards on the market use one of those. That, combined with the fact that the capture worked fine, makes me suspect that the card probably isn't the problem. It's also why the main difference between different firewire cards is the vendor support and the bundled software and cables.

[xed]

The Canopus ADVC-100 has a known problem with a small minority of firewire cards based on the TI chipset. Your best bet?
Spend the $70 to get another firewire card. It will probably work with your Canopus. Also, I use Ulead MSP 6.0, and it's a great piece of software. Infinitelys uperior to MGI VideoWave. Got that with another video card but never used it, was impossibly hard to use.

[ungern]

I use Studio 7 from Pinnacle, and love it!! It's quite bug-free by now. If you want to create DVDs, then try Studio 8, (new edition, perhaps some bugs left) which has everything you need to create a DVD. Pinnacle has a great forum(S7 forum here), where members will help you out if you need help. Worth a look!

[Bondiablo]

1st find out what chip your firewire card uses. If its a Texas Instruments get a different card. I spent $15 on an NEC firewire card and it works just fine with my ADVD-100 and it even came with Ulead VideoStudio 5. The only reason to spend more on a firewire card is if you really like the software package. Also, go to www.scenalyzer.com and download scenalyzer live and use it to test capturing and sending back to VHS. It's fully functional as a trial, just adds a logo every few seconds, but for $33 it's almost as good a deal as spending $50 on TMPGEnc Plus.

[The village idiot]

Also try DVio http://www.carr-engineering.com/dvio.htm it's free, and works well. Might save you the expense of buying a card. Edit Studio 3 now has a card, software bundle. A little more than you wanted to spend though. Somewhere on the order of $150 or more (I didn't actually check the exchange rate for 99 pounds). And that was with the editor and mpeg converter.