IEEE 1394 interface is a high-speed serial interface standard initiated by Apple and TI. It is called FireWire by Apple, i.Link by Sony and Lynx by TexasInstruments. Although the registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers have different names, they are essentially a technology, namely IEEE 1394.

IEEE 1394 is an external serial bus standard with high speed of 800Mbps. In recent years, with the decrease of cost, 1394 card is rapidly spreading. Other related devices, such as digital cameras, hard disks, network cameras, etc., are gradually emerging.

1394 interface has the function of broadcasting data from one input information source to multiple output machines, especially suitable for AV (home audio-visual connection). Because the interface has isochronous transmission function, the quality of audio and video data played back by audio-visual AV equipment is guaranteed, and the playback effect is good.

Strictly speaking, IEEE 1394 card is just a universal interface like USB, not a video capture card. For example, we can connect a high-speed external hard disk to the IEEE 1394 card. However, most of the applications of IEEE 1394 card are connected with DV digital cameras to collect digital video signals, so we usually regard it as an acquisition card. At present, the 1394 cards on the market can be simply divided into two categories: DV cards with hardware DV real-time coding function and 1394 cards with software compression coding.

DV cards with hardware coding function are generally several thousand yuan. DV cards with hardware coding can greatly improve the speed of DV editing, and can handle some special effects conversion in real time, and many of these cards have the function of handling MPEG-II video streams.