I do mine through Firewire - but modern camcorders can and sometimes only do it through USB. If your camcorder is Firewire (1394) then you will probably need a Firewire card.

I bought Pinnacle and though the competition were theoretically not as good, their software took 6 months to get right with updates and patches & I was a year behind the curve. I would never buy another Pinnacle product because of that.

In those days the cheap solutions rendered and saved in Mpeg2, and if the s/w you get does that it will degrade the result a lot sooner. If you do any fancy stuff and create second and third generation clips (rendered and saved then rendered and saved) then it will be noticeable. If you can render in AVI until you burn the CD the losses will be small. AVI DV is a compressed format but not as heavily as Mpeg2. Ask how the s/w works internally - AVI or Mpeg2.

Nero has some very easy to use s/w - give it Mpeg2 or AVI or AVI DV (they are different) in a mix of formats and it will make a very good CD for you. I am sure competing products (of similar price) are equally feature rich.