Is a a firewire card the only thing i need to transfer full quality uncompressed video from my dvx100 to my PC? I have premier but unfortunately no separate deck to play DV's, so i'll have to transfer directly to my PC from the camera for now... From my understanding i just need a firewire card (compatible with my OS of course) and a firewire cable from camera to PC and capture using premiere. Right?

Also, other unrelated questions-- Is it possible to change the aspect ratio to true 16:9 through an editing program like premiere, avid or vegas? why or why not? Is it possible to imitate popular filters like polarizers in editing programs? Thanks!

Dan, a firewire card and cable is all you would need to transfer the footage, using your camera as a playback deck. Remember though, it is still compressed. DV is a compressed format, you can't do anything about that.

Cheers
Aaron

thanks for the response. I'm still trying to figure out how DV works... can anyone give me answers for the remaining questions? Thanks!

Right about capturing from the camera.

You cannot simulate a polarizer very well as you cannot filter video to look through glare on a windshield.

You can emulate the polarizer's effect on color (like the sky) although it is difficult to limit the effect to just the sky rather than all the image as does the polarizer does very well.

how about other filters?

Soft focus, pro-mist and the others can be simulated with filters. ON-camera filters are obviously quicker if you don't have RT editing but then you are stuck with original footage that has been filtered.

Soft focus, etc., are all easy to do in post.

awsome! This website rocks!

Premiere is cheaper if you buy it with a certain capture card.

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Also, other unrelated questions-- Is it possible to change the aspect ratio to true 16:9 through an editing program like premiere, avid or vegas? why or why not? Is it possible to imitate popular filters like polarizers in editing programs? Thanks!
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I'm pretty sure premiere, vegas, and avid will allow you to convert 4:3 movies to 16:9 (vegas does for sure). The resizing algorithms are probably not that good. Photoshop with Genuine Fractals might give you better results. There are some other ways to do it. The term for it is ARC (aspect ratio correction).

New questions unrelated to the original query should be granted their own threads, just to help keep things organized. Thanks.