USB or firewire

[rjack]

Ok - another rookie question. For picture quality, which is better to transfer digital videos from camcorder to computer - USB or firewire? Why?

[guns1inger]

With a few exceptions, DV is the better quality. For the majority of SD camcorders, USB is used only for transferring still images, and low resolution, highly compressed clips for emailing. Only through the firewire port will get full D1, DV avi transfer.

That said, there are a small range of camcorders that will transfer DV over USB2 ports. You need to install specific drivers to enable this (DV over firewire is essentially driverless because it is built into windows). These would only be recent models (12 - 18 months old or less).

In the world of HD camcorders things may well be different.