Plain firewire card vs. dedicated video capture

Factual Questions
1

I’m gonna start some big-time video editing on my computer (got over seven hours of footage to condense down to one hour). Everything’s set up, except for the Firewire, which I’m going to be picking up today. I already have capture and editing software (Adobe Premiere).

I’ve seen just plain ol’ Firewire expansion cards, for around $20… and I’ve seen spiffy “video capture” cards (like, Pinnacle’s products and such) that have Firewire ports, but they go for closer to $100 for the cheaper ones.

So… my question… is it worth it to get a “video capture” card, or should I get just a plain ol’ Firewire PCI card?

2

Firewire will only let you capture from digital (firewire-connected) sources, while video capture cards usually also provide SVideo and/or other alalogue inputs. If you don’t need that, you can stick with firewire.

-lv