Quality loss transferring files to externals via USB?

[sheeep]

A guy I'm working with was shocked to learn that I dump my P2 MXF files to external drives via USB (using an old PCMCIA laptop.) He insisted that transferring files via USB creates a quality loss in the video, which is why everyone uses firewire.

As far as my knowledge goes, USB sends data in spurts, not in a consistent stream as firewire does. I've never heard of a quality loss issue in usb data transfers.

I'm thinking he might be referring to capturing DV or data via usb, I had an old Panasonic camcorder that had an application which let you do this, but the video became choppy.

Anyway, am I an idiot for not knowing this or is there no harm in USB transfers?

-Omar

[Matt Grunau]

A file transfer is a file transfer. It's all just pushing 0's and 1's. Quality loss is a result of over compression and bad codecs, among other things.

USB is no different than firewire, LAN, or IDE cable in that is just transfers data, nothing more. If that data were to get corrupted or had parts missing, there wouldn't be quality loss, there would be file loss.

Your friend is mistaken.

[Barry_Green]

Your friend is 100% mistaken.

[David Jimerson]

With anything digital, as long as you have all the 0s and 1s, you have full quality, no matter what you did to get it to wherever it is you want it.

[David Jimerson]

Now that I think about it, your friend may be thinking about some (usually consumer) DV cameras which also record lo-res video to SD cards, which can then be transferred to a computer via USB. But the video was always low-quality. Didn't have anything to do with the transfer medium. (The higher-quality DV would be transferred only by firewire.)