Newby: Which capture card???

[tr0ss]

Newby here, please bear with me.

I have a Sony Digital-8 camera ...

I'm looking for a capture card to use. I was at CompUSA today and saw 2 of them:
1) Adaptec -- comes with MGI Videowave 4
2) Sony/Pinnacle -- comes with Pinncale Studio 7SE

Anyway, I'm a little confused ... is MGI Videowave and Pinnacle Studio the capturing software? Or the Editing software (or both)? What capturing softare is included with these cards?

If I got another software capturing package, would it work with either of the above cards?

Is there difference to capturing to DV or AVI format? I read something about only allowing 4MB AVI files and AVI needs to split it up among files. Will this be a problem with conversion to MPEG1?

Any input would be much appreciated...

[jtor]

MGI Videowave and Pinnacle Studio are both capturing/editing softwares. The items you've listed are firewire card/software combos, so you should be ok with that.

Videowave is more 'universal', as you can use it on most capture/firewire cards. Studio software also, if you're getting version 7, and so long as you're using an OHCI card. The older version of Studio DV is not. So you might want to check on that.

Other software package for the mentioned cards, would it work? I believe so...but it won't hurt if you check the card and software manufacturer. They might be maintaining some sort of compatibility list in their website.

Both softwares are easy to use, but personally, I see Studio as 'easier'.

Using any of these cards, you'll capture DV AVIs. And I replied to your post about this 4GB AVI. To be more specific, it's not as simple as FAT32/NTFS. You should also consider OpenDML AVIs. I'm using the Canopus EZDV, on a W2K system. But the software creates non-OpenDML AVIs, so I'm limited to 2GB. But Canopus implemented a work-around, that will allow you to capture AVIs of unlimited length...in the expense of having a number of 2GB AVIs. But I'm not having problems with it when I edit the AVIs to MSP, or load it to TMPGENC...works like a charm.

I know somebody here in the forum using StudioDV, on W2K, and can capture the whole DV tape (60mins) to a single AVI file (about 13GB), and can feed it to TMPGENC to create MPEG1...no problem.

hope this helps.