Do video cards effect the quality of digital video?

I am setting up my PC to be used for digital video editing (been doing photos for more than a year now and want to get into video editing) and while putting it together I think I may have destroyed the video card (or maybe the monitor - don't know which yet). Dang. I'll be pulling the video to the computer with a firewire card.

My question is whether the video card plays any role in video editing other than displaying the video on the screen. It doesn't effect the overall quality of the image that is produced does it? Will having a super video card add any quality to the video rendered (or actually will a cheap card loose quality) or will my megaGEsomethingorother card just add to playing games?

Also, as a side note - is one firewire card better than the next? I have to get one of those too.

You are correct in assuming that your mega something video card will have no impact on the edit process. The VGA card is strictly for viewing only.

Pyro makes good firewire cards for input and output of video.

Pinnacle DV500 Plus ( around $700). Is an excellent kit for doing all of this, comes with the Adobe Premiere 6 program as well.

Thanks. That's what I thought. Turns out it's not the video card anyway. I'm not 100% on what it is but I'm going to post in the tech-to-tech section to see if I can get an answer. Thanks for the info.

The DISPLAY CARD have lot's of impact on the quality of the Video editing !!!!!
1. OverLay - You NEED it ind it is highly dependend on your display card (Matrox are the best).
2. Efects - and espacialy with the DV500 - some of the transitions and efects will use your display card to make the rendering faster. You will want a monster display card in this situations. (Elsa Xynergy III).

In any case get a display card with Dual monitor support. You will thank yourself along that way - the moment the project you will be working upon will start to get complicated.

Really. I trust your judgement with video issues more than anyone else scuba, but I'm not sure what you mean. Can you explain what you mean by overlay or post one of your links?

In side adobe premier or any other editing program you will work with there are several sub windows like Timline, Assets, Transitions and the main "Monitor" window.
the picture in this window is created using a system called "OverLay"
When enabled and working good the Edit card send a signal to the Display card directly Via DMA - and the display card is the one responsible to make a picture out of it in the monitor window.
Normaly all modern display cards support this option but some just Do it better (Matrox).
Since the DV500+ is a Capture+Edit card most of the edit work is done on it in real time so you will use this OverLay thingy alot.

The second thing is as i said - while editing you will add efects and transitions to the files. some of them can be created in real time thru the DV500+ Card but some will need to be renderd. (you export the part that canot be played in real time to a new file and replace the area on the time line with it).
Some of the efects and transitions can use your display card to be renderd faster, or when you tweak them to be view'd better. For this you will normaly want a good 3D card.

Hope this will clear things up.
If not you know where to get me.... <IMG SRC="smilies/cool.gif" border="0">

Got it, thanks!