Newbie wants to video edit on his Dell Inspiron 8000...HELP

[Ducati]

A friend wants to video edit on his laptop. He's got a Dell 8000, GeForce2 Go video, and some editing software (MGI Videowave III). Supposedly the sales rep said that he could do video editing on it..that's why he bought it...
UNFORTUNATELY, when i went to go take a look at it, 2 problems exist:

1. both the Sony camcorder and laptop have 4-pin Firewire interfaces. The cable i bought is 4/6 pin interface..i don't think they make a 4/4 pin interface cable.
2. He has NO VIDEO CAPTURE card...i guess the sales rep was stupid and/or stupid and/or a crook.

So what should he do??? Buy a desktop and install a video capture card or is there a capture card via PCMCIA for laptops? It has to have Firewire, not just analog inputs...

thanks...

 

[scottrico]

1. both the Sony camcorder and laptop have 4-pin Firewire interfaces. The cable i bought is 4/6 pin interface..i don't think they make a 4/4 pin interface cable

Firewire is the correct interface to edit video on a laptop, but sony always does things there own way. My JVC camcorder works fine with firewire. I will look at the cable I use when I get home and get back to you.
Video editing has more to do with your hard drive than anything else.
Most laptop hard drives are not fast or large enough to edit video at high rez.

He has NO VIDEO CAPTURE card...i guess the sales rep was stupid and/or stupid and/or a crook.

You only need a capture card if there is not firewire option or your using a analog video camera or taping from a vcr or dvd player (stand alone) or tv.

 

[Ducati]

i just found out that a 4pin/4pin firewire cable does exist..so does a 6pin/6pin...

so i don't need a video capture card to download the video from the camcorder onto the laptop????