Hi everyone,
Just got the HD-100U, and I have a question about getting footage into my editing system.

Now, everything is captured off of tape (s-vhs and dvcpro) directly into the VT4 system. Is there a quality advantage in capturing directly to hard drive via firewire?
I see some very inexpensive firewire cards advertised, are the low cost cards poor quality, and how good do you need to keep what you can put on tape?

Also, any recommendations for inexpensive software which will capture uncompressed AVI files over the firewire?

As you can tell, this is going to be a very different work flow for me, so any helpful hints are greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Lew

Once the footage is wither going to the Tape Drive or across Firewire, I believe the footage cannot get any better. The component outs offer a 4:2:0 colorspace.

The component outs offer a 4:2:0 colorspace.

The component signal is 4:2:2 sampled.

The component signal is an analogue conversion of a digital signal sampled at 4:2:2

I see some very inexpensive firewire cards advertised, are the low cost cards poor quality, and how good do you need to keep what you can put on tape?



Cheaper cards with 1394 firewire are fine. It doe not relate to quality for better or for worse. You could spend $125 or $29 on a 1394/firewire card with the exact same reults to video quality.

A quality card might last longer, have less problems during install, bla bla bla., but don't expect for a second that spoending more on a 1394 card will do any of those things in truth, they simply will cost more money. Buy a cheap card, install it and if it does not work take it back for another.

Good luck with your new bundle of joy!