Digital Camcorder Question!

[luckybaer]

I was at Best Buy the other day looking at digital camcorders. The things are pretty inexpensive compared to what they were a couple of years ago, so I'm thinking of finally taking the plunge.

Anyway, the sales rep tried to tell me that I needed a firewire cable to get the video from the camcorder to my PC. I asked, "Why? It is USB 2.0 compatible, and I have a USB cable at home. Why should I spend more money on a firewire cable?" She said that the quality of the video would be impacted.

I really didn't understand that. How can that be? All it the cable is being asked to do is transfer bits and bytes from the camcorder to the PC. How can a simple data transfer be impacted by cable and by cable spec? I can understand a difference in speed, but in quality? Huh?

Am i clueless, or is she just trying to rack up another $30-$30 for the sale of a firewire cable?

 

[JaGWiRE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by luckybaer Am i clueless, or is she just trying to rack up another $30-$30 for the sale of a firewire cable?

She's just trying to rack up a few more dollars, so the real question here was she young, and was she pretty?

Seriously though, firewire and USB are just different interfaces with speed differences. I much prefer USB personally.

I just re-read your post. You must remember most cameras do have firewire, the camera may not have USB. In that case, you do need a firewire cable because the camera only offers firewire support. You may also need to check your computer for an firewire port. The camera probably has a mini firewire jack and the computer most likely a large firewire jack.

 

[vibin247]

It's a not question of data transfer rate, but it's because USB can't support the sustained throughput needed to transfer video from the camcorder/VTR to the target disk/computer, which is why FireWire 400/800 is still used. If you try to use USB1.1/2.0 when transferring footage from DV tape, you will get dropped frames. Although if the camcorder supports video transfer via USB, then yes, by all means use it. And of course, don't buy those cables from BestBuy, since you can find most online retailers and distributors that can sell them to you for a 1/3 of the retail store price.

 

[lan]

To transfer from tape, firewire must be used. For transfering from memory card, the USB is used like a normal digital camera. That's the way I've always seen it as the features are separated so I've never seen DV transferred by USB.

I've never really used USB with video cameras as I never use that feature as I feel still cameras for still pictures yields better pictures than the still feature on a video camera.

 

[enzoferrari650]

well it depends what camcorder you're looking at. If it does indeed have usb 2.0, and u must make sure it's 2.0 (most camcorders dont support usb 2.0), then using usb will be the same as using firewire. But if the camcorder only supports usb 1.1, then u better get the firewire cable because the quality of the videos will be really poor when u transfer them to the computer with usb 1.1.

 

[doctorjuggles]

I'm fairly clueless about this myself, but when I asked the question at camcorderinfo.com, those in the know told me that, while USB2.0 is decent at file transfer where the average data rate needs to be good, Firewire is better where the tranfer of data needs to be consistant. Apparently USB isn't on the same level as Firewire in terms of consistancy, even though the total throughput is similar.

It's one of the reasons that media bods love their Macs, I think.

 

[DevilDog]

Quote:

Originally Posted by doctorjuggles I'm fairly clueless about this myself, but when I asked the question at camcorderinfo.com, those in the know told me that, while USB2.0 is decent at file transfer where the average data rate needs to be good, Firewire is better where the tranfer of data needs to be consistant. Apparently USB isn't on the same level as Firewire in terms of consistancy, even though the total throughput is similar.

I've used firewire, it's great. I've also used USB 1.x. I don't know about 2.0, but I know that 1.x doesn't let you control the camera where firewire does. I have an older camera, but with my software I can do a kind of smaller image and edit it. Then firewire takes over and can run the camera to any place on the tape within 1/29.97 of a second, forward, back, whatever and get the full image.
I'd go with firewire.

 

[luckybaer]

LOL. I had so much doubt in my voice when she was telling me this stuff, that I must have come across as though I were saying, "You're full of $h!7!"

Well, Firewire it is!

 

[JaGWiRE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by luckybaer LOL. I had so much doubt in my voice when she was telling me this stuff, that I must have come across as though I were saying, "You're full of $h!7!" Well, Firewire it is!

Lucky, not to argue with you, but she might had been recommending firewire becasue most Camera's only have firewire (as a matter of fact I've never seen one with usb.) If it has support for usb 2.0 though, like the other poster said, I couldn't see any harm in using it.

 

[DevilDog]

Mine has both firewire and usb. But as I said, Firewire is a two way street where the computer can control the camera and usb is only one way.
But mine is not usb 2.0 so I don't know if that would work or not.

 

[imported_Echo_]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DevilDog Mine has both firewire and usb. But as I said, Firewire is a two way street where the computer can control the camera and usb is only one way. But mine is not usb 2.0 so I don't know if that would work or not.

i dont know whoever told you usb is a one way street but thats wrong

 

[star882]

IEEE1394, USB 2.0, and USB 1.1 will all provide the same quality when copying files, but the question is how fast do you want those files... (Note that IEEE1394 will often perform better than USB 2.0 by only a small amount - probably not worth the cost of an interface card and cable.)

It's slightly different for streaming video (using the camcorder as a webcam). But the quality difference between USB 2.0 and IEEE1394 is going to be small. In any case, it'll certainly beat the cheap webcams.
Quote:

i dont know whoever told you usb is a one way street but thats wrong

I think that's referring to half vs. full duplex. USB only has one data pair, so it can send data in one direction at a time (switching between the modes very fast to get bidirectional communication). IEEE1394 has two data pairs (as does 10/100 Ethernet) so it can send and receive at the exact same time.

The "one way street" analogy is very flawed, though. That would imply that it can only communicate in one direction, which is wrong. It would be more accurate to compare USB to a single set of railroad tracks - it works in both directions, but not both at once!

Now, if they really wanted it to be fast, they would use Gigabit Ethernet! Even IEEE1394b can't compete with a gigabit connection.

 

[milhouse6]

Quote:

Originally Posted by star882 IEEE1394, USB 2.0, and USB 1.1 will all provide the same quality when copying files, but the question is how fast do you want those files...

I'd think any inexpensive camcorder still uses DV tape, yes? In which case it's all realtime capture anyway. USB2.0 is certainly fast enough to handle the datarate, but firewire is *the* standard for DV. I can guarantee you that Premiere, Vegas, all of 'em will work right out of the box over firewire, but am unfamiliar with any camera that sends DV over USB. I could very well be wrong, but I have yet to see one.

I once had to deal with a camera that had both USB and IEEE1394 connectors: the USB connection was only used for sending the crappy digital stills from the XD card to the PC.

If your computer doesn't have a firewire port, as long as you aren't shopping at a big box retailer a generic firewire card can be had for under $20 these days. And a firewire cable is like $5.

 

[KrazyIvan]

My camera has both Firewire and USB but you can only use Firewire to transfer video and USB is used to transfer pictures that are stored on SD card. You can still transfer the pictures via firewire but you cannot transfer video via USB.

I got my firewire card and cable on eBay for $10.