USB for Video Capture

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jamberoo
  • Start date Start date
J

Jamberoo

Can somebody tell me if USB 1.1 is adequate for video capture. I have just
bought a Panasonic VDR M30B and it only has USB.

Jim
 
Can somebody tell me if USB 1.1 is adequate for video capture. I have just
bought a Panasonic VDR M30B and it only has USB.

Jim
Click to expand...


Only if it's low-quality, you want pre-compressed lower bitrate MPEG. In
general, a USB 1.1 device is the worst alternative.
 
A thousand curses... I wish I had thought of that before buying a camcorder
without firewire!!!

Thanx

Jim.
 
If you are capturing to the DVD RAM that is included on your camera, your
can transfer any captured video over the USB or you can burn a DVD R disk on
the host at full resolution. I don't know if it even supports sending video
directly over the USB without capturing it on the DVD RAM.

Marc Reinig
System Solutions
 
Jamberoo said:
A thousand curses... I wish I had thought of that before buying a camcorder
without firewire!!!

Thanx

Jim.
Click to expand...

Actually, I think it will be better than that. The Panasonic camera
will actually allow you to edit the video ON the DVD-RAM disk; it
doesn't need to be downloaded to the computer. Later, if you want to
burn it to a DVD+/-R it can be downloaded - but it shouldn't take as
long as you might think.

The movie is stored in MPEG2 format on the DVD-RAM, not DV like in a
digital tape-type camera. DVD-quality MPEG2 has 9X less "bandwidth"
than DV tape - about 2 GB/h rather than 18 GB/h. That's because MPEG2
is fairly highly compressed, with some image loss; DV is almost
lossless. So, it'll take a lot less time to download over USB 1.1 than
you might suspect; it's a lot less data than if you were using DV
tapes.

The only downsides I see are twoforld: first, a lot of programs
(Pinnacle Studio [BTW, Studio 8 = POS], Ulead Videostudio, and many
others) have serious trouble editing MPEG2, because of the compression
- MyDVD does ok, but it's so completely basic you'll get bored after a
single use. Image quality is also a concern, but as long as you use
relatively high bitrate settings (at least 6000 Mb/s) you'll have very
nice picture quality.


Good Luck!
ECM
~~~~~~
Please don't reply to the email; it's a spam trap!
 
Back
Top