Firewire DV Capture on a Laptop Computer -- howto??

[Phantom Of The Opera]

I want to transfer digital video sent by my camcorder and/or my Canopus ADVC-100 to my laptop computer (Dell Latitude D600, WinXP SP1). Since the computer has no Firewire interface, I will have to buy a PCMCIA Firwire card for this purpose. The card I have in mind is the AVermedia DVD EZMaker Video Capture Cardbus device.

I would appreciate comments/advice on the following:

1. Do I have a reasonable chance of pulling it off successfully? Since I transfer to my desktop computer all the time via the Firewire interface, I don’t see a problem (in theory) doing this with the laptop.

2. What is involved with this PCMCIA thing? Do I simply buy the interface, plug it in and go (that’s how simple it was with my PCI plug-in Firwire card on the desktop computer), or are there complications that I have not foreseen?

Thanks in advance.

[unclebud]

You should not have any problems. If your running XP (either version) the drivers are built in. It should be plug n play.

If you download the ScenalyzerLive demo from http://www.scenalyzer.com, and install it.
Then run the hard drive write-speed test to see how the performance is. You don't need a camera or firewire card attached to do this.
This should confirm that the computer will be up to the task.

I use the cheapest Laptop I could buy last year with a 40gb hard drive (probably 4200 rpm) and a $20 cardbus firewire card. ScenalyzerLIve captures DV without a hitch on it.

Good luck and enjoy.
UB

[Phantom Of The Opera]

Thanks UB.

[upshot]

DVIO is free and works fine also...

If your going to spend some money on transfer software I'd suggest iuvcr because it captures from firewire to any codec you own...

[Phantom Of The Opera]

Actually, I currently use WinDV to capture on my desktop machine, and I figured I'd try that on the laptop as well. I have Nero 6 and NeoDVD 5 if I wish to use them, but I've never had the need to. WinDV works very well for me.