Right now I just use a standard Pyro DV Card (around $100). If I were to get something like the Matrox RT2500 or the Pinnacle DV500, would I reap any of the card's benefits in Vegas? Because I basically refuse to use any other NLE at this point.
Vegas Video is designed to work with basic OHCI compliant IEEE 1394 cards and do all the effects/realtime render for preview in the software. Proprietary cards that do this kind of thing aren't supported. In other words, we don't access their feature sets because we already use your native hardware to do some of the more important things proprietary cards are capable of.