Firewire or Usb to capture ?

kostasmagic · Post by **kostasmagic** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 5:29 am

I use a usb connection to capture video from my mini dv digital camcorder
The quality is not good. Do i need a firewire connection ?

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 5:45 am

If you want high quality, full frame video, yes.

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 9:29 pm

Check your camcorder user's manual. There really shouldn't be a difference, because with a digital camera, you are just transferring digital data (bits & bytes) from the camcorder.

But, some camcorders do seem to send lower resolution over the USB port. This is probably to keep everything compatible with USB-1, which is much slower than Firewire or USB-2. (With USB-1, it would take forever to transfer high resolution video.)

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 10:55 pm

DVDDoug wrote:Check your camcorder user's manual. There really shouldn't be a difference, because with a digital camera, you are just transferring digital data (bits & bytes) from the camcorder.

But, some camcorders do seem to send lower resolution over the USB port. This is probably to keep everything compatible with USB-1, which is much slower than Firewire or USB-2. (With USB-1, it would take forever to transfer high resolution video.)

I beg to differ here, USB 2.0's sustained transfer rate is not up to handling full frame DV at full frame rates. I have not seen a MiniDV camcorder sending full frame DV over the USB connection. It's usually a much smaller frame size and reduced frame rate, which is ok if you want to use the footage for video streaming. If you want good quality you will need the firewire connection.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 11:09 pm

An additional benefit of using firewire is that you can control your camcorder from the computer (play, stop, fast forward etc)

ploggy · Post by **ploggy** » Fri Oct 07, 2005 7:27 am

though some camcorders can stream videos via the USB port, most camcorders use them mainly to transfer digital still of the videocam. it may work with bundled softwares or Win Movie Maker but software like ulead or others may not be compatible with it. the best choice is still firewire.

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Fri Oct 07, 2005 12:00 pm

I'd agree with the majority here, definately firewire.
USB2 cannot sustain the data rate for full dvd. It has a burst speed higher than firewire, 480 to 400Mbps, but as it says this is burst and is not continuous. Whereas firewire offers continuous high speed.

Movie maker does not generally work with USB2.

Graham