making a laptop so it can capture video. how??
 

Hi. This may be a stupid question. I'm actually asking it for a friend. You see... I have never owned a laptop... I use a desktop computer. But my friend has a laptop and wishes to start editing video on it which she shot on her new sony dv camcorder.
Taking a look at her laptop, I couldn't find any firewire input jack. So I imagine she has to get some kind of video card with firewire for her laptop. Now, how exactly does that work? Can you add a video card to you laptop? is it something external or internal? What is it that she must do to start doing some video capturing to her laptop and start editing (She'll probably get either Vegas or Premiere).

Thank you.

Laptops have huge drawbacks in the realm of upgradability. You won't be able to change any of the parts that are in there, except maybe the harddrive and upgrade the ram.

To add a firewire port, you will need to get an external firewire device, and very likely it will connect through the PCMCIA port. I don't believe that there is an IEEE 1394 through USB 2 device because the speed of the USB 2 is slower than the firewire. But don't quote me.

So get a pc card device.

I would have to agree with D.J.. If there are no firewire or USB 2.0 ports, you will need a PCMCIA card adapter. I would get a combo card with both types of ports to be fully covered and these cards are not that expensive either.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJ Kinney .....I don't believe that there is an IEEE 1394 through USB 2 device because the speed of the USB 2 is slower than the firewire. But don't quote me.

USB 2.0 is actually faster than 1394a (typical firewire). I recently bought an ADS PCMCIA combo card with 2 USB 2.0 ports, a 1394 (4 pin) and a 1394 (6 pin). USB 2.0 is rated at 480 Kbps of transfer whereas 1394a (typical firewire) is 400 Kbps and finally 1394b is 800 Kbps! DV is actually rated at a lesser data rate than firewire provides.

Relative Threads
www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=51341

www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=51265

Really? Well, that's good to know. But does that mean there is, or could be, a device that would simply convert the firewire to USB 2.0? Like a little magic box?