I have the Pinnacle DV 500+ and capture in Premiere 6.0
Thanks to Kwag, I think I have ALL of my encoding problems solved... but I have yet to optimize my capture process which is where I believe I am losing some major quality.
So the Pinnacle DV AVI codec is easily the best one I have available right now. My software offers no option to capture uncompressed which is what I'd REALLY like to do -- but whatcha gonna do, eh? I just started seeing mentions of the Huffy codec, so I pose the question:
When capturing to AVI (to later be converted to MPEG1), is the Huffy Codec better than the Pinnacle DV Codec?
Has anyone even heard of the Pinnacle codec?

File size is not a factor. Obviously, I just want the highest quality. Just to be specific, my complaint with the Pinnacle codec is that it's adding noise to the video... it's very subtle, but I can tell. It's no where near looking "uncompressed"
I'd like a somewhat scientific answer to this, but even if someone says "Huffy kicks all forms of @ss", I'll be happy!

I'm looking forward to trying it in a few hours.