High Speed DV Capture

[Nickhamm]

Is it possible to capture/transfer video from a DV camera using firewire faster then real-time? Can you capture/transfer DV video at 4x using Adobe Premiere Pro via firewire?

[Cornucopia]

While it should be theoretically possible within the DV spec, neither any DV Camcorders nor any std. NLE's have implemented this yet. Camcorders will only spit out the signal as fast as the tape plays in realtime, cuz it's playing undecoded from the tape signal. You'd need to have a deck/cam that could play the tape in FF, but without skipping frames, like 60 or 120 fps instead of 30fps. (in NTSC land)
The only system I know of that has this is Sony's BetaSX with IMX(?) which is an I-Frame MPEG2, IIRC. If you get their camcorder and VTR and editing system, you can capture/transfer at 4x realtime. Unfortunately, this costs $$$$!
That's why somebody came out with that DV-recording HardDrive unit. You plug the firewire from your DVcam to it and record with that instead of tape. Then you disconnect and take it to a computer, connect as a firewire HD, restart to mount, and you're ready to edit. It's not cheap either (couple of K$).

Scott
Scott

[The village idiot]

Funny, there are a couple of tape to tape systems that can dub from one to the other at slightly faster than real time. I forget who and what model, I want to say Sony, but could be Panasonic. Whatever it was, I believe it was dis-continued for lack of interest.