r. This may seem obvious but I want to make sure that we outline the process. First is bringing the video onto your hard drive. Second is editing the footage. Third is outputting the footage, whether it be printing to tape, burning a CD-Rom, creating a quicktime file for web use, etc. STEP THREE: involves output. Because you have so many options for output formats you also have many options for hardware and software. People normally either go down one of three roads A) web (low quality) B)CD-ROM (reasonable quality) or C) print to tape (medium to high). The first requires either no or free software. The second requires a CD-Rom RW drive. You may or may not be able to print back to your DV tape, depending on your Firewire board. If you cannot, you will need another hardware card and the appropriate video deck that you want to print to. There is considerable extra expense in printing to tape but the quality is far superior.
STEP 1: The solution to the first step for many camera users is a hardware card that you install into your computer that is used to transfer footage from your DV tape to the hard drive. This is commonly called "Firewire". You'll have to consult with your owner's manual, Sony or the makers of some Firewire boards to find out which are compatible with your camera. Simply put, it is a video board that plugs into your motherboard and provides jacks to plug your video camera into. It translates your DV signal to a digital one your computer can recognize. The file type depends on what standard the hardware manufacturer decided to use (AVI, TGA, MPEG). Be aware that what type of software you use in step 2 be compatible with the file type your video board uses.
STEP 2: In order to edit, you will need some type of editing software to use. Many video boards come bundled with their own programs. Most of them are not very good. Better boards come bundled with better programs as a general rule of thumb. Adobe Premiere is the king of these low end editing programs. Price is $600 but it is worth the cost. It is easy to use, versatile and fairly powerful. It's also common and well supported by other users and hardware manufacturers.
By the way, all manfacturers of hardware cards claim that their product works with all software packages and vice versa. Do not believe them, this is simply not true. Be very careful of what combinations you put together. Don't trust the word of the salesman or manufacturer. I personally know of a friend who paid a professional hardware dealer to put together a nonlinear system and they never got the machine to run despite the fact that all the components were supposed to work together.