Re: Buying a CineWave card ...

Working with DV you don't need Cinewave. You can do RT effects with DV material in FCP without hardware acceleration and it works better that way too. If you wanted to work with Component analogue sources or SDI sources you would have use for the Cinewave card. But then you need fast media storage.

FW400 is fast enough for DV. Uncompressed footage needs higher data rates. FW800 is fast enough for 10 bit SD if you have fast enough drives like G-RAIDs. La Cie FW 800 fast drives could be fine as well but they fail a little too often for my taste. (The G-RAIDs fail quite often too unfortunately).

I have a Cinewave card sitting in a Dull 500 G4 locked up in a closet. I never use it but since it still works I keep the set up in case I need something that's on that machine or if my other set up all of a sudden dies and I'm in a bind.

The only advantage that my Cinewave card has is that I can to clocks/slates in RT with it. Rendering ten 30s clocks is a pain in the neck if you ask me.