Help with best DV setup

[NervousElk]

Hi, could anyone suggest the best setup I could buy? I own a digital cam corder DV and a copy of premier 6 but only have an ATI all in wonder 128 pro card. I am looking to get my film onto the computer and back out again either to vcd, svcd dv tape or dump a copy to VHS and i dont want to loose quality, well as little as possible. There are so many options out there and I am quite new to all this so dont have much of a clue. I have ide hard drives 128 mb memory and a athlon 950 mhz processor. Any help would be greatly welcomed as I hate the current results iam getting.

[humdinger]

oooohhhh the best setup would be a powermac g4 running dual 800mhz processors with 512mb ram, 120gb hdd and finalcut pro, with dvd pro authouring. well you did ask....

[Tommy]

hmmmm......

You looking for a new computer system or just some new hardware. I'm going to assume its new hardware. Your computer is fine, but if you like add more memory (its cheap now) and a bigger hard drive (cant have enough space).

If your going to transfer digital video from a digital 8 or mini dv camcorder i suggest you forget about the ATI AIW and use a firewire port. The video is already in a digital format (DV) and just needs to be tranferred to your computer.

Once in the computer you could do what you wanted, however be advised that dv takes a lot of space. An 18 minute clip is about 4GB. Sorry its just the way it is.

If you don't want to lose quality go back to dv tape or dvd. However, both are expensive. Personally if its a home movie i'll edit it and burn it to a vcd or tape it using vhs (to show people), but I keep the orignial footage on the dv tape.

[NervousElk]

thanks for the reply. Yes iam looking for hardware. The firewire port sounds good, but does it matter what type etc? and are there restrictions in editing the size of the files in premier? ie does it slow premier down? and will it play back at full speed onto dv or the monitor etc? thanks