I started out this summer with the help of vcdhelp.com and this forum and have been successfully making svcd's from DV. All I've been using is Ulead, which came with my FW card.

The only thing I don't like (of course) is the long encoding times. I was under the impression that there was hardware out there that could spit out an MPEG2 as fast as I could pipe the video in, thus saving hours and hours waiting for one hour of video to encode. My research now has me confused. Am I missing the boat on this hardware encoding stuff? I'm looking at the Canopus ADVC1394 because of all of its capturing options. Will this allow me to do what I am thinking of?

Thanks!

HHhhMMmmm....You Can do it with the software that came with your Card, if it is "Ulead Video Studio 6" or "Ulead Media studio"...But captureing directly to Mpeg will not give you the best Quality...You should try Useing a Better encoder...Most GOOD encoders these days can encode at real time or faster if you have a good system...Try something like CCE or MainConcept Encoder....