andrewdelvard

Are there any variations in quality? I'm currently looking for ways to tweak mini dv transfer to my PC. I purchased a Sony firewire cable (odd that that Sony don't supply them with their Mini DV camcorders) and the quality difference over USB transfer is HUGE.

Thanks.

judgejules

Andrew,

When you say "the quality difference over USB transfer is HUGE" do you mean that the speed of xfer is better with firewire as opposed to the quality of the image xfered (which shouldnt change)?

If its the speed you're referring too, then yes firewire is faster than usb1 but I dont think differences in cable quality should make any difference in terms of speeding up firewire. All cables are certified to xfer the firewire protocol, if they cant they cant be marketed as such and as firewire has a bandwidth limit there's no way to improve it by using a higher quality cable.

J

andrewdelvard

I thought it was a given that you should always use firewire for mini dv capture
I have experienced MUCH better quality using IEEE1394 instead of USB. Using USB, you are capturing a low-resolution, highly-compressed, re-encoded version of the video from your camcorder. Using IEEE1394 you'll get an exact digital copy of the DV video from a camcorder. Smooth, uninterrupted images.
Thats my experience anyway. I'd never use usb again.

judgejules

Interesting, I didnt know that. I got some video off my parents camcorder a while back using USB. I just assumed that it got the digital copy off there, but it just took a bit longer via USB.

Iain Young

USB1.0 hasn't got the bandwidth to transfer full resolution video. USB2 can do it (it has a theoretical higher transfer rate than the basic firewire), but it depends on your computer. USB2 is generally controlled by your CPU whereas FireWire pretty much always has an independent controller. So, if you are doing a huge file transfer over USB2 and then start a render (or any other processor related thing), they are both going to take a hit. Firewire does not suffer from the same issues, and so tends to be the preferred option for video transfer where reliable speed of transfer is vital.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

No difference in firewire cables as such

but huge differences in speed between the 2 (or four)

USB 1.1 slow 12mbps

USB 2 fast 400mbps

Firewire 400 400

firewire 800 800

all these figures are of course theoretical