firewire pci cards

[dalmer]

Hi,
I need a firewire pci card for transfering video from a dvcam with pal standards (720*576 25fps) DVAVI or mpeg2.
There are some cheap ones like 20-30$, what are their difference? Any low video quality or dropped frames?
Can you give me an advice for up to about 50$ please? I dont know which one works how.Is CPU and ram matter?
Thanks!

[jimmalenko]

My Firewire card was only $25 AUD, and it has never dropped frames or sacrificed quality.

Filling in your location in your profile might allow people to give you info specific to your country, too

[guns1inger]

Anything with a TI chipset will do the job, even at $25

If you put your computer specs in your profile we could see if they are adequate. I used to transfer and edit DV on a celeron 400 (o'clocked to 500) with 768mb ram and never dropped a frame.

[dalmer]

Thanks,
I see internal port of pci firewire cards are standard 1394 port, (same with external), there is firewire in chasis front panel but its cable is for mainboard ieee1394 (different from standard 1394, its like usb cables in mainboard connectors).

How can i connect chasis front panel firewire to firewire pci internal port?

[gadgetguy]

It's likely that the front panel port was designed to connect to a motherboard that supports it. Usually a "row of pins" on the motherboard. In which case I don't think you can connect it to the PCI firewire card.

[thecoalman]

Mine just has individual female pins marked accordingly on the cable coming from the port on the front. You just plug it into the corrsponding male pins on the Mobo.

Note that the pins on my mobo are not specified on the mobo itself. I had to look up what each pin assignment was. I'm also pretty sure they are not standard assignments on every Mobo, so the assignments can vary.

Consult the manual for the card if it has an internal connection. If your feont ports cable has a plug on it just amke sure that the cards pin assignments match up with the plug. If they don't you'll have to reaarange the wires correcttly in the plug. If the plug don't fit you'll need to purchase individual plugs for each pin such as the ones that came with my case.

[dalmer]

Thanks for the help