I shoot short documentaries and I'm currently using a Sony VX2100 and editing using FCP on a G5 Mac (dual 2 Ghz). In the next year I plan to move into HD/HDV (probably the new Canon XH A1).

Any recommendations for a capture card? What are the advantages to using a capture card as opposed to just hooking up a deck to my Mac via Firewire?

If this has been covered before in-depth, my apologies (and a link to the relevant thread would be appreciated). Thanks.

Canon dosnt make a deck for their HDV footage. I really dont know what a capture card can do but I have never seen a capture card expect for kona card for SDI etc.. I would just run a deck via firewire direct into the computer

A capture card would be to work with formats like
betaSP
digital betacam
DVCPRO HD (tape)
HDCAM
HDCAM SR
analog sources

They'll take a signal either analog composite in, analog component in, SDI in, HD-SDI in, or dual link HD-SDI in.

You probably don't need a kona/blackmagic/aurora/bluefish/etc.

2- If you need to capture the above formats at high quality (i.e. SDI quality), then you may also want to capture your DV via SDI.
This is just for workflow...
DV frame size is 720X480.
SD frame size is 720X486.
The different frame sizes can be an annoyance.

DV over SDI is 720X486.

Thanks for the clarification, Glenn. I don't need to work with those formats. So I'll stick to using a deck via Firewire.

Glen- The 6 lines difference between DV and SD, would that be the green lines that sometimes show up at the top and bottom egdes of the screen?

don't think so... that might be a fcp bug, or the bg color is green.

the lines are typically black