[BlueChopper]

Could someone please tell me the difference between cheap firewire cards and more expensive ones? I can get a cheap no-brand from dabs for less than £20, will this impact on the quality of results and /or speed? If so which cards would you recommend?

[JayX]

in all honesty, i have no idea.

i can't see *why* there would be a difference, the only thing i've noticed is the expensive ones come in pretty boxes and have crap editing software thrown in. (and sometimes have 3 ports instead of 2)

i bought Dazzle just because it was the same price 2nd hand (but still sealed) as a Dabs cheap card, but it had the cable with it too, so thought i might's well.

[gmm]

I bought a £20 d-link card and have had no problems.

[MarkE19]

The differance between cheap/expensive cards is the whistles and bells.

A £20 card will probably be just that. A card and no or very basic software.

Going up to the £500+ cards you get advanced software (such as Adobe Premiere) that can do semi-pro effects, more effects and often works faster and is more stable. The cards will often have real-time effects that use the hardware of the card and do not rely so hevily on the CPU/memory of your PC. They will also very often have analogue as well as DV inputs.

There are plenty of options between the above 2 prices. In cards under around £200 the cost will mostly be down to the software.
Quality of the final project will not be affected by the card, but the software does make a big differance.

Mark.

This is a newbue question but how do I know the number of pins my firewire cable should have ie. 6 pin to 4 pin, or 4 pin to 4 pin??

My camcorder says 4 pin - but how do I find out how many pins my PC needs? (hope that makes sense as I can't think of any other way of putting it!)

Also, if the FireWire card is internal, how do I know if I have room for it, and do I need a specialist to come and fit it???

Thanks

Louise

All PC cards are 6-pin. I bought a 15 quid card from dabs which has 3 ports (not that I'll ever use more than 1) and it included the cable and some (not very good) software

argh, just posted a huge thing on how to fit PCI cards which was lost by IE

Suffice it to say - this will tell you all you need to know

http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/build.asp?sect=3&page=2

C

I don't know that much about computers, but I bought a firewire card from dabs for £13.50 , opened up my PC and pushed the card into a spare PCI slot ( PCI slots are white strips, you can't miss them / also the card only fits one way.)and it works perfectly.