Poor quality capture

[colinbarratt]

I'm using MovieFactory 6. My camera is a JVC GR-DX67EK.
I'm connecting to my computer using what I think is a Firewire to USB cable. The quality of video that I can save is awful. Very pixellated. There is no sound either!

Now... I've transferred video from this camera successfully before but clearly not like this! Any help would be gratefully received.

Thank you.

[Ron P.]

Yes the quality would be terrible. I think those Firewire>USB cables are not meant to be used for transferring video from a miniDV, but used mainly for transferring static data such as photos, and documents. What you need and should use is a Firewire cable, which would probably be a 6 pin to 4 pin. Does your computer have a Firewire port? If not is it capable of adding an additional PCI card? If so, purchase a Firewire card and Cable.

[colinbarratt]

Hi Ron,
Thanks for the speedy response. My PC does have a Firewire socket and I will try that but the reason I'm trying to do it via USB is that my friend has a new laptop (no firewire port) and wants to transfer video. Her previous laptop had a PCMIA slot into which she plugged a firewire card. She doesn't have that option now. She lives around 200 miles away so it's not like I can sit down and sort it for her easily.
I'm looking for a way to transfer using USB really... but I'm getting the idea pretty quickly that the quality is not going to be anywhere close to what is required.
I wish I could remember how I did it previously... I'm pretty sure it wasn't with a Firewire cable...

[skier-hughes]

I'm afraid you have two options, firewire and quality, usb and crap
As Ron has already said.
If you are doing it for her, then capture at your house using your pc to an external hdd and post it to her.

[Ron P.]

It can be done with a USB capture device. There's several around. I'm guessing the problem you're running into is the camcorder only has Firewire. Do you have the camcorder or does your friend? I'm guessing that it is the latter. If so the first place to check is the capture settings being used. You're probably not able to capture DV when USB is being used to plug into the computer. In that case try setting the capture settings to DVD MPEG-2. The key here is that the data stream can be maintained by the USB. If not, then the PC buffers, which results in dropped frames. Make sure the Frame Size is set to DVD specs, 720 x 480 (NTSC) or 720 x 576 (PAL), HQ.