Need Advice On IEEE1394

[RVN]

A friend of mine has a digital camcorder that has firewire. He has a Dell P4 that does not have an IEEE1394 connector. He wants to download his kid's movies to his hard drive. He's also interested in DVR/tivo for the PC.

Is there a combination that will do both?

Is there a preferred video editing software?

Is there a preferred hardware package?

What do you reccomend? He has a 1.8 GHz P4 with 512 MB ram and is running Windows XP Pro. It has a nVidia GeForce2 MX/MX400 Video card with TV/out (s-video). I don't know anything about this stuff and want to help him.

Thanks!

 

[Zak]

Re 1394... I use Texas Instruments OEM IEEE1394 controller (hard to find) on a WinXP machine and the $15 CHP controller from NewEgg on a Win2000 box - both AthlonXP and VIA KT266A based systems. They both work fine and natively under XP and 2000, i.e. no need for drivers, and are great with video capture and external hard disks. For home video capture and diting I like SonicFoundry Video Factory 2. It's a really nice program, stable, 1394 capture and control, lots of features and MPEG and QuickTime export is quite fast. All others I tried sucked IMHO: Pinnacle, MGI and Ulead (wouldn't even work on XP).

I have no comments on DVDR for Windows though
http://soundforge.com/Products/NewShowProduct.asp?PID=490
Zak

 

[RVN]

Much appreciation for the information. Thanks Zak!