The basic libraries you'll want are libdv (DV-format decoding library), libraw1394(IEEE-1394/firewire hardware access library), and libavc1394 (AVC control library, so you can play and pause your camera via computer control).

Please note that many broken libraw1394 packages do not properly setup the /dev/raw1394 device. If you encounter problems when running dvgrab, kino, or other DV capturing programs regarding the raw1394 interface, try the following commands to create the /dev/raw1394 device:
Code:
# /bin/mknod -m 600 /dev/raw1394 c 171 0
# /bin/chown root:root /dev/raw1394You can also create this device by running 'make dev' from the libraw1394 source tree.

2. What programs can I use to capture/edit DV video?

After the above mentioned libraries are installed, you can use dvgrab to capture DV video via commandline or kino for a graphical interface (kino is a nice video editor as well).

Using dvgrab from commandline is fairly easy and intuitive. A good way to start is to connect your camera to your IEEE1394 port and start by running
Code:
dvgrab -i --format dv2 output.aviThis will start dvgrab in interactive mode (type ? to see camera controls) using type-2 AVI as output. See 'man dvgrab' for more information.

Kino is also a great choice for a graphical capturer/editor - its interface is rather intuitive and easy to use.

3. What programs can I use to further process / encode my DV video?

The mjpegtools provide a set of useful command line apps for processing DV (and other) video. The tools are set up so that they can be used in a pipe sequence for video processing. For example you can use lav2yuv to decode DV video to YUV, yuvscaler to resize the video, and mpeg2enc to encode to mpeg-2 video (all these apps are part of the mjpeg suite). 'man mjpegtools' will give you a good tutorial for using the different utilities. mjpegtools also includes the lav2mpeg bash script utility to automate the encoding steps for you for different targets (vcd,svcd,mpeg1/2). Note that you'll need to make sure your version of mjpegtools is compiled with DV video support (using libdv) in order to encode DV. If you're compiling from source, you can add the '--with-dv' option to mjpegtools' configure script. See 'man mjpegtools' and http://mjpeg.sf.net for more help.

Additionally, when configured with libdv support, mplayer/mencoder can be used to play, filter, and transcode DV video to any of mplayer's supported codecs.

and threr are more in another day good bye

you can use Roxio Creator Suite 10 for making movies, ripping and encoding videos from your camcorder.