Some questions... - not yet answered clear enough for me.

[Herbert W. <Herbert@Wengatz.de>]

Hi there!

I'm a Unix/Linux professional, but I'm new at the digital video stuff
(which
I use as hobby). I've just recently bought me some hardware and I pray
that
this combination will work not only under M$, but also under Linux.

I've done some extensive research and I only need somebody who can tell
me
"yes this will probably/sure work" - or not...

I have a Sony TVR110E, for which I'll receive soon the cable and
software
to enable the DV-in port. It has a iLink/Firewire port.

On the PC side I bought me a Pinnacle Studio DV card, which seem to have
three Firewire-Ports, based on the chips from TI.

The rest of my hardware should be OK, too:
650 MHz Athlon, 20 GB UDMA-Harddisk, or if that should fail: 2x 4 GB
UW-SCSI Disks, with a Riva TNT-2 Ultra graphics card (AGP 2x) and 382 MB
RAM. 

I've licensed Main Actor as well. I've read about Kino and dvgrab.

Does anybody has some experiences with all this?

Since I know the Studio DV card has three IEEE1394 ports, I guess it may
be possible to mix two firewire datastreams into one. The symbol on the
package proposes that ( two dashed lines approaching a circle, a third
line (no longer dashed) leaves the circle ), as well as two ports are
external (for the camcorder and an VCR, perhaps) and one port is
internal,
which proposes that there may be a firewire disk or so.

Any software available for mixing two firewire datastreams into one?

Furthermore: I do plan to use my TNT2-Ultra-Card with XFree 4.0 and GLX.
I also (more or less) need (!) the new Kernel (2.4.x), because it seems
to fix a lot issues with my Athlon board (makes it faster, etc.) but I
heard that the firewire-driver for the new kernel is not yet stable
working.
Is that true? - Will this be fixed soon?

Another point is: I've filmed my last vacation with the new videocam.
Since it allowed filming in 16:9 format, I tried it and it looks nice.
But: can I - or how can I cut this format under Linux? Does any of the
mentioned software-packages support the 16:9 format?

Maybe I can offer some help here. - I'm willing to support anybody
who says: "OK, I'll try to make this work..." - I've never written a
hardware driver before, but I know some C - if this helps?!

Help me to help you to help us all! (Should be the motto of the open 
source community! ;-) )


Best regards,

Herbert