On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 11:05 PM, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com> wrote: > Lanny Marcus wrote: >> I will need to buy a PCI card for Firewire and put it into one of our >> Desktop boxes.. Probably my wife's, because it has the biggest HD. If >> it doesn't work on CentOS 5.2, we will need to use M$ Windows. > > good news is, firewire cards are quite cheap. note that DV uses firewire > 100, which is compatible with 100-400 but NOT 800 (sigh). so don't get a > card which has only firewire 800 ports. also, you'll need a 1394 cable > that has the standard firewire 100-400 connector on one end and the little > tiny camcorder connector on the other (this is similar to but VERY DIFFERENT > than the miniUSB connector) > > bad news is, you really should have a separate drive just for video capture > to reduce disk contention as the streaming rate of the capture can't be > interrupted. its only around 3MB/sec, so its not /that/ bad with today's > faster drives, but still. John: Thank you, for all of the above information! If I can't buy the card here in our town, there is something like Ebay and I can probably order it there. Very useful data to have,, *before* I buy the card, and not after. I have a couple of spare HDs, in a box, so I can install one, if there is a spare bay. I will check out the specs on our 3 Desktops, to see which of them can handle a 2nd HD. Lanny