I first started video editing with no special kind of video editing equipment. My first video was done from DVD Source footage, so I simply decrypted the digital video off the disc and played with it in Premiere (which was no easy task considering how large the files got). I also used this method for my video "I Just Got Home". After that I obtained a Pinnacle DC10 and used some modified drivers so I could use it like a DC30 card in Premiere. This method was used for my video "Hold On", "Closer to God", and "Soul of an Angel". After that (which was about the end of 2000) I began working in DV, and I then obtained a Pinnacle DV500 Realtime Editing card, which has proved absolutely invauable. I highly recommend this card, I think it's the best choice for consumer DV editing. I now use DV exclusively for all my video editing work. MJPG is a thing of the past - DV and MPEG2 are definately the future.

If you're interested in getting into video editing, my recommendation is to obtain a cheap FireWire card, and work with that. If you're trying to make Anime Music Videos, however, this becomes rather difficult because you can't get DV source footage to work from. Sony makes a product which will take S-Video or Composite input and convert it to a DV stream through a FireWire cable, which you can then hook up to any conventional FireWire interface card. Sony also makes a camcoder which has this feature built in. Other solutions also exist, but this way is pretty cheap and provides very very good video quality (when working from good video sources, it's not going to make 3rd generation fansubs look like LDs).