PCI Firewire Card

[Elwood]

My apologies if this is the wrong location for this post.

I would like to know if a PCI Firewire card performs any different than one that is directly located on the Motherboard. Reason for asking is I may buy a DV Camcorder before I get my PC built and wanted to know if I would see any performance difference (other then the CPU speed) when decoding my movies from the camcorder.

Thanks

[saphalline]

In a word: YES. It's impossible for it to perform the same, since a PCI firewire card is located on an expansion bus and not directly integrated into the chipset. Will you notice a difference? It depends. What are your system specs and which PCI firewire card will you be installing?

[Elwood]

I have a 1.5 P4, 128MB RAM, USB 1.0, etc. and I do not know what kind of card. I don't know if I can afford to buy a camcorder and build a new PC at the same time.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

For video editing, 128 megs of RAM is chickenfeed! 1-2gigs is the advised amount these days it seems but I do it just fine with 512 on one system, 768 on another using a pci capture card.

A good video card is a must also.

[Elwood]

So if I am hearing this correctly, I need to get another PC before I can remove video from a camcorder?

[Fruss Tray Ted]

No.
Your 1.5 gigahertz procesor should do ok but not be up to the more desired speeds. What you DO need is more RAM which is easily upgraded. Cost of RAM will be determined by what type it needs to be. DDR is cheaper these days than SDRAM of not too long ago.

It would really be nice if we knew what your mobo is and also what camcorder you plan to use. Firewire is slower than usb-2 by quite a bit but it is faster than usb1.1. But what the camcorder has for connectors may warrant the need for a pci capture card like mine. If you haven't decided on one and you are asking what you need for your pc, you arte actually putting the card before the horse.

Video editing has been done aplenty on systems much less powerful than yours in the past but nowadays, speed, tons of Ram, and software requirements are issues you need to consider. So it can be done, you just need to optimize your current system and you should do fine. Don't go opening a studio with that pc, just use it for home use.

[Elwood]

Well, yeah, I am not going professional like this at all. I have a Dell PC w/ 800 ECC RAM so I refuse to spend money on DELL crap when I am building a new PC in the future. I am looking at a Sony HC42 or HC-90 (which are both DV).

So, I would rather put money into a new PC instead of paying $700 for 1 gig of RAM (2 512 modules, the Dell Way!). Outrageous, eh?

So, I would like to get by with what I have until I can build another PC. I have a little girl that will be here in December so the camera is the priority. I could suffer having a PC that would perform the tasks slowly, as long as it does perform them without any quality loss/issues.

Thanks again

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Ok. That sounds logical. You could get some pc-800 ram for less than going to Dell but it will still be expensive and a new pc is a better choice anyway.

I'd go with the DC90 if you can afford it. The optical sensor (ccd) size is 1/3 inch compared to 1/5 inch for the DC42. This will mean better light gathering and most likely a clearer picture. The 42 is only 1 megapixel and the 90 is 3mp so that alone would be a darn good reason to go with the DC90 imo. They both can send video through Firewire (yuck), A/V cable analog (what mine only has) and usb (better). Reviews on both here and heer.

[Elwood]

I am not all that concerned with the still shots b/c I have a Sony 5 MP that works great. I do believe that the 90 is the better choice, which is why it's more expensive. What I don't know, it how much better the picture will be. I will be using the wide screen mode. I would like to have a High Definition one, but I am sure that comes along with the blue ray technology. Generally speaking, my current thinking is buying the cheaper one to get me going and then buying a HD one once they develop the technology.

But from what I hear, the fire wire is the way to go even though the USB 2.0 is faster. It encodes it differently for some reason. So many options, but I will be buying a camcorder soon and I want to make sure my PC will support it.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

That 6mp camera is nice but I see where you would like to have a video camera for baby's first words or first steps etc.

I researched a little and found the original Firewire (400mbps) was slower than usb2 (480mbps) but FW1394b is faster. Copper is 800mbps and fiber is 1600mbps Wow!

It seems to me though, if a newer pc is in the near future and it is liable to have onboard Firewire or usb2 the very least, that you could get by with usb1.1 for now and not even worry about buying and fitting an expansion card if your mobo already has usb ports.

If I were in your boat, I would just rip/upload the video in playback or realtime mode with your current setup. Those camcorders still use tape for video correct? It's just the still shots that use the SD flash cards I AFAICT. If you need to 'play' the tape in real time to capture video, what is the advantage with Firewire? Seems any ole version of usb would be fine for the speed of transfer. It's the sd cards where the data transfer would benefit from the available speed.

Where your processor and RAM are more likely to be a bottleneck is when you are converting file types such as avi to mpeg-2 or WMP files etc. Also when compressing files and burning the dvd's if that is what you plan to do with all those b-o-r-i-n-g home videos-!-!-! Just kidding!!! I wish I had such technology as affordable when I raised my rugraaaa, uh, kids...

But anyway, as long as you have a slot available, those PCI Firewire are cheap anyway. Your choice in the end anyway. Have fun with it, I hope your kid ain't camera shy or he's in a heap of trouble...