HI I just got a Panasonic DVX100B I will be using it to livestream softball games, right at the moment I am using a laptop with a firewire connection, I am looking to upgrade my laptop with a USB 3.0. I need to find out if they make a cable that can connect to the camcorder and a USB 3.0 port.
Help with USB connection
- Thread starter Pomai
- Start date
David W. Richardson
Chapelgrove Films
I've never heard of a USB-to-firewire adapter that actually worked very well, though.
What is the point of connecting the camera via USB when you already have a firewire port on the laptop?
What is the point of connecting the camera via USB when you already have a firewire port on the laptop?
Al MacLeod
Well-known member
No mention of firewire on the new usb3 laptop. The camera will interface usb to usb3, but only at usb2 speeds.
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Thanks for the input. My old Toshiba laptop has the firewire connection, the new laptop I am looking at does not, it has a USB 3.0 connection. Now I have been told that the USB 3 is way faster than the firewire! Now is it a fact that even if I find a way to connect the camcorder to the USB 3 that I won't gain any data speed or in my case improving the upload speed? Mr. MacLeod if I find a way to connect the camcorder output to a USB 3 cable and connect the cable to the USB 3 port will it work as a USB 3 connection or still a USB 2 connection?
Even if you could connect the Firewire to USB with an adapter, any software you'd capture video with will be looking for a Firewire (1394) connection, not a USB connection. You would need some sort of driver for the USB to to be read as Firewire for those purposes, and I'm not sure I've heard of one, if it's even possible. Firewire and USB transfer data in entirely different ways -- USB in packets; Firewire as a steady stream. I don't even know how an "adapter" cable COULD work at all. Totally different protocols.
David W. Richardson
Chapelgrove Films
Even if the USB is faster than firewire, the camera doesn't have a USB port -- it only has a firewire port. Which means data will only travel out of the camera at the speed of firewire, regardless of how fast the USB port on the laptop might be. I highly doubt you would gain any data throughput speed.
Even if you did, tape is a real-time transfer. It's still going to take 60 minutes to capture a 60-minute tape.
If it were me, I would use the old laptop to capture the footage to an external hard drive, and then connect that drive to the new laptop to actually do the editing.
Al MacLeod
Well-known member
Over the years there have always been ads online touting a firewire to usb solution, but that's the nature of the internet...folks will sell you anything and claim it works. I have never tried one but I have never heard reliable sources say it works. It's to bad...lord knows they could sell a lot of them if it were possible. Usb3 is a specific protocol and while you can output video from the camera to a BMD shuttle intensity and get a usb3 solution you encounter a whole new set of flaming hoops to get that working. It would still be a real time offload unless you resolved all the requirements for the Intensity shuttle to work and recorded directly to a pc (or mac with thunderbolt) in the first place.
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David W. Richardson
Chapelgrove Films
I have tried one. With the DVX100a and the Canon HV30. It didn't work.
I don't know if it could work or not, theoretically. But Sony Vegas, when doing video capture, doesn't recognize a camcorder connected via USB. It will recognize a USB webcam, but not a tape-based camcorder.
I would imagine that, if such a thing were possible, it would take more than just an adapter cable. It would probably take a sophisticated converter box that could translate between the two interfaces and route signals accordingly. I'm not technically savvy enough to know if such a thing is even possible.
David W. Richardson
Chapelgrove Films
Come to think of it, even a sophisticated converter box would still be connected to the USB port on the computer. Anything connected to a USB port is going to be seen as a USB device, not a firewire device. So unless there is a software that can do video capture of digital footage via a USB port, I don't think even a converter box would do the trick.