If you're building a system for basic video editing, I suggest you do two things.

First, you should consider what your sources are. If you have a lot of analog, you should get some kind of analog capture card. If you're capturing DV exclusively, then all you need is a Firewire port somewhere along the line. If you've got a lot of compositing or chroma keying in mind, an uncompressed analog capture solution is going to help things considerably. Most people don't fall into the latter category, so I'll focus on Vegas and what you mentioned.

If you stay all DV in your workflow (and for most of my clients I recommend this), then an OHCI-compliant IEEE1394 port along with a Canopus ADVC-100 (if you have a time base corrector) or ADVC-300 (if no TBC) for analog capture is the best setup. It's foolproof, works 100% of the time, and guarantees audio/video sync. There are even solutions for component input higher up in their product range, but all work great with Vegas.

Honestly, I don't trust Matrox cards too much. The reason is that Matrox cards are very finicky when it comes to the motherboard chipsets you can use them with, and they are famous for driver abandonment (e.g. a 1.5 year old Matrox RT2500 has no Premiere Pro drivers for it IIRC).

drumone,
Forget capture cards. Get a JVC SR-VS30U dual-format VTR. It supports DV and VHS/S-VHS formats. It can even play DVCAM tapes. Better yet, any analog device you hook up to it (including the built-in VHS/S-VHS deck) plays out the IEEE 1394 port in real-time. This means it not only functions as an all-purpose DV/DVCAM/VHS/S-VHS editing VTR with machine control, but is also a high-quality "capture" device. You can even use it to get real-time previews straight from the Vegas timeline onto an external NTSC monitor.

Best of all, you can get it on the internet, mail-order, for about $800. There is also a cheaper model, the SR-VS3U, that goes for about $650, but it doesn't support DVCAM and skimps on a few other features.

I got mine at www.abesofmaine.com.

-nate-

btw,
the biggest difference between between premiere and vegas is that premiere crashes all the time and is in general a pain in the butt to use. i had premiere and a matrox digisuite setup for many, many years. it was a pain in the friggin' arese.
trust me: don't go the premiere route. if you do, you'll end up regretting it, trying vegas, and making the switch anyways.
-nate

Thanks for the input. I was pretty much sold on Vegas I think I just need a push. Let me ask one more thing. How does the "real time" effects work, will I still be doing quite a bit of rendering and if so, how's the speed? (my projects will consist of "higher level" home movies, maybe some music videos, and occassional bursts of creativity. Nothing planned for commercial use (yet). And I'm leaning toward a AMD64 3200, with two WD1200 SATA 8Meg drives, 1 gig 3200 DDR memory etc. So I'm trying to start off with something fairly powerful.

The real time effects scale with your processor. Don't expect to be able to do transitions with color correction and titles all in one shot, but you will be able to have real time preview to your tv via one of the DV bridges or in the little monitor window. That assumes that you've stayed in a DV flow the whole time, however. You can adjust it for quality versus speed so you get a good idea of what you need. I think you'll be very pleased both with the stability and the speed of Vegas, especially as compared to its competitors.

Thanks again!! I think after a very long couple of weeks reading and searching I'm ready to take the plunge. I'm sure you will see me back here again (hopefully not too often)

I'd be a poor help if I didn't prompt you to at least try Vegas4 and PremierePro demos. You might need a magazine cover disc for the Premiere demo.
You'll get watermarking in Vegas and no MPEG in/out or AC3 out.

Despite Matrox RT series cards being very good. The Vegas system scales with your new PC and if the capture board goes wrong inside or outside of warranty, you don't have any trouble getting back up again.

Canopus ADVC range of OHCI adapters give various combinations of options with either breakout boxes or outboard conversion. A TV card can capture analogue at 720x480 etc, but not typ. within Vegas capture. Dedicated DV solutions have less chance of picking up noise, especially if you don't have a budget for well screened interconnect cables.

Think about audio, especially surround sound. You don't need to use multiple mono/stereo microphones to enjoy this. The mix can be part of your overall "look". With the music bed slightly behind the viewer, etc.

Whilst audio is better in PremierePro than it ever has been. The use of PremierePro with accelerator boards, a la Matrox, restricts the rendition of surround sound on the timeline.

If you need professional uncompressed or lower than DV compression. Vegas5 is likely to open this up hardware wise. Today you can stil work on so many formats even indispersed with further formats, without recomp just to get the timeline working (a la Premiere6). However, you have to use say the SDI or HDV capture tool that belongs to the card or camera respectively.

Editing apps are quite a personal thing. Do please try out the demo and do so to critisize what you see. Forum members at a vendor site are likely to promote their own purchase. It is human nature.

I'd be a poor help if I didn't prompt you to at least try Vegas4 and PremierePro demos. You might need a magazine cover disc for the Premiere demo.
You'll get watermarking in Vegas and no MPEG in/out or AC3 out.

Despite Matrox RT series cards being very good. The Vegas system scales with your new PC and if the capture board goes wrong inside or outside of warranty, you don't have any trouble getting back up again.

Canopus ADVC range of OHCI adapters give various combinations of options with either breakout boxes or outboard conversion. A TV card can capture analogue at 720x480 etc, but not typ. within Vegas capture. Dedicated DV solutions have less chance of picking up noise, especially if you don't have a budget for well screened interconnect cables.

Think about audio, especially surround sound. You don't need to use multiple mono/stereo microphones to enjoy this. The mix can be part of your overall "look". With the music bed slightly behind the viewer, etc.

Whilst audio is better in PremierePro than it ever has been. The use of PremierePro with accelerator boards, a la Matrox, restricts the rendition of surround sound on the timeline.

If you need professional uncompressed or lower than DV compression. Vegas5 is likely to open this up hardware wise. Today you can stil work on so many formats even indispersed with further formats, without recomp just to get the timeline working (a la Premiere6). However, you have to use say the SDI or HDV capture tool that belongs to the card or camera respectively.

Editing apps are quite a personal thing. Do please try out the demo and do so to critisize what you see. Forum members at a vendor site are likely to promote their own purchase. It is human nature.

the realtime performance depends mostly on the speed of your processor. i run vegas on two computers: a PIII 850 Mhz and an AMD Athalon 2200. On the PIII, i can play straight cuts realtime from the timeline, but cross dissolves "stutter" without being prerendered. On the AMD computer, it plays cross dissolves with a couple layers of text overlay in realtime. my guess is that with an AMD64 3200 youll experience good realtime performance for most basic editing functions.
-nate-