DV capture advice 4 newbies !!

[RJMCREADY]

Hi every1,
After literally tens of hours messing about with my (totally useless) Asus video suite graphics/capture card, endless driver configurations,driver,wdm changs,video distortions,loss of frames,sanity & hair etc.....I cannot begin to stress the joy I gained from taking advice from a couple of users posts in this forum. It basically goes like this..

I want quality in-qaulity out(like all of us here) from my lovely little sony digital vid cam. I read screeds of info on this site about capture cards and was getting interested in investing in a pinnacle dv500 ($500 price tag or so). Then some users were saying to try just a basic cheap firewire card and see what results u get before splashing out. Well for me it was the best advice I have had this year, check it out :

SYSTEM :

AMD Athlon 2500,
256 mb RAM,
1 x 80gb HDD (used for OS,games,apps&CAPTURE!)
$15 firewire card bundled with firewire cable&ULEAD vid studio DV.

RESULTS :

1st ever capture in Adobe Prem 6.5 with default DV settings(720x576 25fps 16bit audio) 30 min capture with ZERO frame loss, ZERO quality loss and about 6gig in size !

Premire just loves editing this Raw uncompressed data and I get 100% instant preview/rendering transitions from the timeline!!!! (256mb RAM,1xHDD?!) The only part I have to wait for is the exporting of the finished production which is around 30sec processing time for every 1min or so of footage. But I dont care as you obviously leave the computer to do this when you are watching tv,down the pub etc :P And lets face it-how often do you export large completed polished videos? all the time is used in capture and editing.

My only reason for this post is hopefully to savecmany pour souls a lot of bullshi# & hassles and get down to some real video capture&editing. If u can relate to this post and are not sure what 2 do-take a gamble $20 or so is not much to lose if i all goes wrong, but i see no reason as to why. And B.T.W, this post is not aimed at intermediate/advanced users who do need all the extra timesaving/polished features of an expensive capture card,just at the guy who wants an ideal capture editing solution and doesnt know what 2 do. I really hope this advice helps somebody out, Cheers !

PS :I am originally from Scotland but now live in Thailand. Today I have just returned from a festival held in an ancient temple complex overrun by maques monkeys. The town of Lop Buri set out a banquet for these amazing & funny little beasts and I got 40 mins of amazing footage : monkeys drinking str8 from beer cans running amok on the town streets etc, just came back,captured the lot to HDD and am just in the process of editing this footage- great fun!

[Will Hay]

As you know, the reason you're getting superb quality via firewire with no sync issues and frame loss is because you're not capturing at all, you're transferring the footage from one medium to another.
Whoever suggested you splash out $500 on a capture card when you have firewire capability on your camcorder deserves to be shot

Will

[Craig Tucker]

You're Scottish and considered spending £500 on a capture card

Sorry for the stereotype, could'nt resist