Hello. I`m sorry if this has already been asked but I`ve been searching the Internet for a while and I`m really exhausted. I have a digital camera and I got a USB cable and a Pixela CD with it. And my questions are... 1. I once installed all that stuff on my friend`s computer and the video wasn`t running smoothly but it was running, and the resolution of both video and photos was bad. Some people told me USB was the culprit and that I should get a Firewire card. Other people said it has nothing to do with it and that I can fix the problem by solely adjusting the parameters of the camera. The problem is, I`m from Europe and when I bought the camera I got a manual in probably all European languages except my mother tongue and English. Yes, I did try but I guess I`m stupid because I didn`t find what I needed. 2. My operating system is Windows 98 and my processor is Pentium II, 64 MB RAM so I`m wondering what should I hope for. Can my computer handle USB streaming at all? Thanks!
I have a similar problem. You definitely need a firewire, you will only get choppy vcd with your usb. The problem is Pixela/imagemaker does not recognize the firewire, hopefully you have movieshaker to which seems to be the only thing outhere that will work with the firewire. Now you have a dinasouar for a PC that is another problem, PII is really pushing it. My dilemma is I have a PAL DCR-LP1E and live in the USA where my TV will not playback the images. I have been trying to make DVD quality movies , the best so far I have been able to do is get a MPEG2 file , But I dont know how to convert it to play on a standalone DVD player.
Well, I`m planning to upgrade my computer in a couple of months so that`ll fix the "dinosaur" problem . As for Firewire, what makes it better than USB? When I connect my camera to the TV the picture is fine but when I capture photos and try to transfer them to PC their resolution is so low that they`re useless - is it because of USB or what? I have no experience in this area and neither have my friends.
IEEE1394(or "firewire" as apple call it) is better than USB for video for 2 main reasons. Firewire has "device control" wich means the computer can tell the camera what to do(play, record, zoom, whatever), secondly firewire is heaps faster at 400Mbps* wich can handle full DV quality images. *USB2 has 400Mbps but is only avalible on new boards and i know of no cameras that are USB2--im sure they are on the market if not in the pipeline. a good non-liniar edition programme is a must if you want to edit your footage, I suggest a more recent version of Adobe premier; 6 or 7. with still photos on a camcorder, the resolution will always be poor because the CCD is only designed to capture video--wich is a much lower resolution than photo-quality images. a cheep digital still camera will probably take better quality photos than the best of the camcorders _X_X_X_X_X_[small]Camera: panasonic NVDS50 canon S45 EOS 1000f 35mm System: P4 3000mhz 800mhz fsb, 512mb DDR RAM P4 1500mhz 256 DDR RAM[/small]