Hi I hope you can please help!

I have just purchased a Panasonic NV-GS400 and i am looking to start editing my Home video's. As i am a relative noob when it comes video Shooting/editing i would like some info on how i should capture my footage. At the moment i am using a XP Home PC with 512 DDR Memory,120GB Maxtor HD(NTFS),Nvidia 6800 LE GPU and a Audigy 2 with 1394 socket. Should i buy another HD and keep it just for Captur/Editing if so which size and should it be internal or External? Also if External as some have a usb connection would that conflict with the 1394 capture process?
Also as my new £1200 NV-GS400 did not come with a Firewire lead (Joke!) is there a certain type of lead i require?

[MarkE19]

My suggestions to get you up & running with video editing on your PC would be as follows:

Get a dedicated firewire card for around £10 online. The port on the soundcards are not fully compliant, so best avoided. The card will be supplied with a firewire cable, so that sorts out that problem.
Your PC can run 4 IDE devices internally with no problems, so if you have space then add another as there is no point paying for an external case if you don't need to. Make sure the video only drive is slave on the same IDE channel as the boot drive. Put CD/DVD drives on the secondary IDE channel.
If you do decide to go external on the HDD then get a firewire case and not USB2.0 as firewire performance is better.
Get the biggest HDD you can afford as you will fill it up as video will take 14Gb per hour and you will still need more space for file conversion etc.

I think that covers all your questions, but feel free to ask when you have more!

Good luck,
Mark.

Cheers for your help mark!
I think i will go with the Internal ATA/IDE drive as its a lot cheaper (£40-£60).. and as my Mobo (Asus P4S8X) does not support SATA! Also i see so many drives (especially Maxtor) all with the same specs ie ide/ata, Buffer size,RPM etc but the only differences are the No's at the end. If these are just model No's,why the price difference? Also can they all be used for Capturing/Editing ?

PS-The drive i have installed is a 120gb Ultra fast ATA Maxtor 6y120L0 (2mb 7200rpm) would the extra 8mb buffer and the RPM make that much difference when editing/capturing ? Also is it really essential that i install a new 1394 card as i do not have that much room due to a Video card cooler or maybe i can get one of those multimedia in/out interfaces (simular to Audigy 2 Platinum) if i did would it connect via my Mobo?

cheers Mate

[MarkE19]

Firewire card - well if the soundcard ieee1394 port works for you with no problems then there is no reason to buy a dedicated firewire card. If however you have problems then it may well be required!

Basically any IDE HDD of ATA-100 or better will (/should ) be good enough for video capture/editing. I would guess the price differences are down to quieter drives in the range, and perhaps newer models, longer warrenty etc.

Mark.