Your professors are wrong.
Every question is a stupid question.
Most of the problems userse encounter are due to operating system limitations. Since Linux was designed for embedded systems, video applications tend to go against the grain but there are ways around the compacted nature of the operating system. This driver is omitted from the shipped kernel for various academic reasons. There are separate configuration settings for audio and video recording. If you select video4linux for video capture the audio may still attempt to capture from firewire.