Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Using USB to import Video

Some of you have been planning or trying to import video from our camcorders to your computers using USB. If you have a PC, chances are you have only a USB port and NOT firewire. We purchased our recent fleet of cameras because they have USB ports and come with USB cables. This led us to believe you could import video via USB. This past summer we discovered that you can only transfer still images you capture on a memory card in the camera, not import video. Someone else told me today they are sure they can import video to Quicktime using USB. So what gives? Has anyone truly imported video via the USB cable? Tell us how.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

There is a way
In windows, use your Windows movie maker and choose capture video.
Then, when you start the caputre, all you need to do is push play on your camera and it will capture the video in real time!

1/31/2009 1:12 PM  
Blogger grasshopper said...

The questions isn't whether you can capture to Windows, its whether you can use USB to transfer the digital video vs. just firewire.

This question has since become more interesting since 2005 when I first posted it. Many of our cameras have flash drive ports which allow you to record to 1 - 2GB flash cards instead of just miniDV cassette tapes. We especially like these cards which convert to their own flash DRIVES.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EWI8IK

2/03/2009 3:01 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Most cameras will not allow you to import video via USB. Some do, but the quality is reduced. This is because USB is slower than firewire. Even though USB 2.0 is 80 mbps "faster" than firewire, in reality firewire is much faster with sustained data transfers.

So short answer, it would be beneficial to purchase a firewire card so you can get the full DV quality to work with.

3/26/2010 12:42 PM  

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