What's the difference between capturing a DV via firewire port and via a USB port? Is the data directly affected? Are the features of the video data stream changed? I thought it was only an issue of speed: firewire is supposed to be faster. I don't see how speed matters because the capturing speed is the same as the speed of the tape being played back in the camcorder. When I capture DV video from my camcorder, I just push PLAY in the camcorder and RECORD on the capturing software. Is there another way to capture DV? I'm trying to capture DV from my JVC camcorder onto my Acer Aspire laptop using ImageMixer software. So far, it has produced an mpeg file. How can I tell if this is MPEG1 or MPEG2? How can I easily convert it so I can edit/author the file (using TMPG Enc DVD Author or Ulead Movie Factory (Which is a better program for editing/authoring and burning?))
The Firewire is a direct transfer of digital data from the tape to your PC so the qaulity of your video file will be exactly as it is on tape. Capaturing over USB is a video streaming and frame grabbing process, much like a webcam process. Because USB does not guarantee the required tranfer rate for full DV, the video is compressed to a lower quality by the camcorder, before it is sent out. Check this: http://www.digitalvideoclub.com/basics/transfer.php About you ImageMixer software: throw it away, go to Firewire and use any DV capture Utility and capture in DV-AVI. Do the MPEG compression after editing as the final step before authoring and burning a DVD. A description of the whole process: http://www.digitalvideoclub.com/basics/tapetodvd.php
