how experimental is 1394 these days?

[Kurt Lieber <debian@kirpatrick.com>]

Santa brought us a MiniDV camcorder for Christmas, and I'm interested in 
using linux to do some basic digital video editing (home videos, soccer 
games, stupid stuff like that)

I know IEEE 1394 support is still experimental, but my question is, how 
experimental?  Is anyone using it (especially for digital video 
capture/transfer) and, if so, how successful have you been?  I don't mind a 
few application crashes, and even the occasional system crash but I'd like to 
avoid things along the lines of file corruption, kernel corruptions, etc.  


Also, if anyone has had particularly good luck with a PCI 1394 card, please 
post the brand/model that you're using.

Thanks.

--kurt