(HELP PLEASE) Going from firewire to usb...

S

Shampcity

New member
Has anyone else ran into the problem where they got a new computer which doesnt have firewire anymore and had to run firewire from your camera to usb into your computer? Ive heard firewire is dying out and usb is mainly what everyone uses and runs faster. Ive also heard firewire gives you better quality than usb? I have a DVX100 which has the mini firewire port on it and I need to run that into my computer which only has usb ports. If anyone has some good information much is needed. Thank you.

-Lucas
 
USb doesn't have enough bandwidth to transfer all the information from the DVX. It would degrade the quality severely. Trust me, I tried before I got my mac. :)
 
Yeah...what Barry said. (as usual)

A firewire interface card should be really cheap and will work just fine.

~DPS
 
Shampcity,

If you have a tower, there are expansion cards which will give you firewire which are not the same as the laptop cards Barry mentioned. If you do go this way, check your expansion bay type before purchasing.

Can you even get firewire output converted directly into a USB input?? I haven't seen that done. Someone enlighten me as this could be useful.

Joe,
USB will get the job done as many of the newer cams are USB only. It isn't about the ability to transfer the data, it will. It is just slower doing so.

Due to the slower data rate, USB is unable to live monitor or record to a computer in real time in DV or any better quality codec. If you use a external raid drive to edit your video data, firewire is superior to USB. Future USB may improve enough to do these tasks. Firewire is fading a little in some cameras and computers, which is a shame since it is a very useful interface and the fastest in common use. Firewire isn't dead by a long shot, and I would stick with it until something better comes along.

Question: Do any of the mini DV cams have USB out? If so, you could use one in playback mode to log your footage. This would reduce the wear and tear on your DVX heads also, serving the same purpose as a VTR deck. This has been much discussed here, so do a search.

Best Regards,
Grant

Regards,
Grant
 
The magic of Firewire - and what makes it incompatible with USB in our application - is the AVC mode. When transferring from a DV camera to a computer with Firewire, you are actually streaming the video stream from the tape to the camera. USB can't do that.

USB is used for transferring files - and Firewire can also do that - but that's different to capturing from DV.

You can't just "convert" from USB to Firewire, no.

- Mikko
 
im using a newer laptop capturing onto an external. has no expresscard slots. just straight usb. i think they have adapters that go on the end of the firewire to change it into usb. see what happens i guess, but thank you for the info. a lot of good stuff.
 
no and yes.
It's very different.

USB can't stream video the same way Firewire can. It uses system resources for communications management, etc. It's specced to go up to 420mbps

Firewire can do that too, but it's also a networking protocol, and can do streaming with dedicated reserved "slots" (what you use in DV streaming mode). Firewire's communication is all handled by the controller chip; it has direct access to hardware resources (like RAM [DMA]) so it doesn't rely on or tax you OS. It's specced up to 400mbps (For Firewire 400). Firewire also has support for fiber built into the spec.

Overall Firewire is much more rhobust, but for some reason USB is what caught on for main stream use.

- Mikko
 
What you may need to do is just capture to a firewire enabled computer and then copy over. I am assuming you are using a newer windows laptop or MacBook. Before I got a Mac and FCP, I edited on Pinnacle Studio, and I got the software package and it came with a weird DV converter. The inputs are firewire, RCA, and S-Video. The outputs are the same except USB out. I would go firewire into the converter and USB out since my motherboard didn't have firewire and I didn't buy a firewire card... Full quality and no dropped frames. Don't know how it happened but it did...
 
There are in deed units that can convert incoming video from various formats (including Firewire) to various codecs and then transfer them into a computer over USB.

But you can't natively transfer raw DV via USB.

- Mikko
 
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