USB vs DV connection

[TVR-NUT]

Hi all. Just a quick question regarding the above connections with regard to camcorders. I currently have a camcorder with both connections, but use the dv connection when tranfering footage to my pc. The main reason being that as far as I was aware, dv gave the best quality picture and enabled the software to have control of my camcorder.

I am now thinking of upgrading my camcorder. However I have noticed that most new ones only come with an usb connection. So if I was to buy one, would usb still give me the best picture quality and can I still control the camcorder with my editing software? If not, what's the best way around this?

Edited by TVR-NUT on Saturday 3rd January 17:04

Edited by TVR-NUT on Saturday 3rd January 17:05

[Fordo]

usb or dv (or firewire as its know) give the same picture quality- theyre just different types of transfer protocol. All your transfering is a digital signal that consists of 1's and 0's, which get decoded by the computer. usb and firewire are just different ways of transfering the signal.

firewire was invented for video, as it uses its own hardware controllers, giving a very stable constistant data rate, which is greta for video. Most professional video cameras have firewire 400 or 800 ports on them.

usb can have a higher data rate than firewire, but requires more input from the processor to control the transfer, which can mean an overall lower sustained data rate. Something thats essential when transfering broadcast quality HD video, but probably not so important for consumer level camcorders.

As your right in pointing out, most new consumer camcorders dont have dv (firewire) anymore. I think its simply the case that the companys have decided to just stick with usb for consumer products, since a lot of pc's dont have firewire ports.

They'll be no difference in quality

(apologies if ive been overly techy!)

[twister]

Fordo said:

As your right in pointing out, most new consumer camcorders dont have dv (firewire) anymore. I think its simply the case that the companys have decided to just stick with usb for consumer products, since a lot of pc's dont have firewire ports.

I think it's as much to do with the growing number of camcorders using something other than tape - with a tape-based camera you have to maintain a realtime data transfer or suffer dropped frames, but with a hard drive/DVD/flash based camera you can transfer the data at whatever rate the hardware can support without any issues. And as I understand it, firewire was specifically designed with realtime transfers in mind...

[TVR-NUT]

Thanks for your replies guys. They are much apreciated and have answerd my question well.

Fordo - don't worry mate, you wasn't too techy at all. You explination was clear enough to me.

[Fordo]

twister said:

Fordo said:

As your right in pointing out, most new consumer camcorders dont have dv (firewire) anymore. I think its simply the case that the companys have decided to just stick with usb for consumer products, since a lot of pc's dont have firewire ports.

I think it's as much to do with the growing number of camcorders using something other than tape - with a tape-based camera you have to maintain a realtime data transfer or suffer dropped frames, but with a hard drive/DVD/flash based camera you can transfer the data at whatever rate the hardware can support without any issues. And as I understand it, firewire was specifically designed with realtime transfers in mind...

yup, good point there