| Product: |
Belkin IEEE 1394 FireWire PCI Card |
| Date: |
27/10/00 (3037 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: very easy to use, editing software included
Disadvantages: none
UPDATE 11/06/01
Since the release of Adobe Premiere 6.0 I have been able to capture video footage straight into Premiere and edit it. This after a quick replacement of the DV codec from the Texas one to the Microsoft DV codec supplied with Premiere 6.0. Works flawlessly, very sweet indeed!
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This is THE product to use if you want to capture film footage from a digital camcorder and transfer it to your PC or Mac. Basic video editing software, MGI Video Wave III, is included in the package so you don’t have to spend extra money on that.
IEEE 1394, popularly called Fire Wire and iLink, is a standard for high-speed connections. It promises transfers up to 400Mbit/sec which makes it ideal for digital video editing that usually requires large amounts of data to be transferred between devices.
When we purchased our Sony digital camcorder, I was a bit disappointed that there was so little information to be found on where and how to get a Fire Wire adapter for my desktop PC. You see, many of the Sony products come with built in support for Fire Wire (also called iLink) but the majority of products do not support this. This means that as soon as you purchase a Sony product with iLink you’ll want to connect it to your other devices like VCR, TV, CD or as in our case, the PC.
After a bit of research and comparing of prices, I was happily surprised to find this Belkin product. It promised to do what I needed and it was half price of the other Fire Wire cards I had seen.
It is bundled with MGI Video Wave III. This software surprised me with its simplicity yet powerful features. Naturally, it supports capturing of DV from the digital camcorder and it has various effects you can apply to your footage: transitions, titles and adding sound tracks among others. When you are finished, you can easily export the movie back to your camcorder, burn it as a VideoCD or produce a low-bandwidth version for the we
b.
The drawback is that my favourite video editing software, Adobe Premiere, does not support DV and the Video Wave III is not capable of all the things I am used to. There are two solutions to this:
Solution 1.
Capture the video, make a first edit in Video Wave III, export it as a high quality AVI and finish the editing in Premier.
(Computer geek warning:
Solution 2.
You will need to know that there are two types of DV AVI; older type AVI2 and newer type AVI1. The older type is built on VideoForWindows, which is supported by Premiere 5.1. The newer standard (AVI1) is build on DirectShow which, unfortunately, Premiere 5.1 does NOT support. There are indications that newer versions of Premiere will support AVI1.
Many cheaper FireWire cards capture the DV as type 1 and this is the case with the Belkin card. After a lot, a lot of research, I have found a tiny software that works with my PC and allows me to capture AVI2 that works flawlessly with Premiere 5.1. It is called ‘DVIO’ and can be found at http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Office/7844 /dvcapchoice.htm)
Summary:
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Last comment:
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richardleonard - 06/01/01 This sounds like quite a good capture card. I bought the Pinnacle DV500 which is around £530 - although it is more expensive it sounds as though it has more features and can be used win Adobe Premiere. My review can be found in Video Capture/Webcams > Pinnacle Systems/Miro > Pinnacle Systems DV500. |
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