Since the new baby’s right around the corner, I bought a digital video camera today. It’s a Sony digital 8, and though I had no idea what I was looking for when I bought it, it seems like it’ll work out alright. I need to buy a FireWire PCI card for my computer before I can really start using the camera, but it does also have USB output, though I’m not sure how well that’ll work. I bought it at Wally, so I suppose if I end up not liking it, I can just take it back. I probably won’t even use it until after we go camping this weekend, ’cause I’ve got too much getting ready left to do to be messing around with toys.
Did you ever find out if you can actually pull DV video off via USB? or if it’s just for stills?
Apparently it will stream the recorded video via USB, but it can’t just grab an entire video without playing it in real time. At least that’s what I can gather from the owner’s manual, but it’s not exactly clear on that issue–I’ll give it a try after I get a chance to record something.
Trust me when I say you want firewire.
USB stream is crap.
The firewire gets much better quality, whereas USB has a high frame loss rate.
Still the even better way to do it, is get a vid card with video inputs (rca) and run it out from your camera to the video in, almost no loss of frames, then you just put sound output to input and put ti all together.
Its a more involved process, so Firewire is your most convenient option.
Good luck.,
I’ll agree with everyone about the Firewire, though I also would have recommended MiniDV as opposed to digi8…I’ve just had better luck with it in the long run.
USB is too slow to transfer digital video in real time. USB 2.0 would do the trick since its much faster, but I highly doubt your camera has USB 2.0 support. firewire is the way to go. the only way that can mess up is if your hard drive is stinky slow and you have to drop frames because of it – but thats not a firewire limitation.
the video capture card option isn’t really an option… it’s stupid to convert digital video to analog, only to convert it to digital again on your computer. it ruins the entire point of digital video, and as you can probably imagine, it’s very lossy. with the firewire transfer it’s entirely digital and there is no loss of data at all.
Trust me when i say marc is a moron. 😛
he’s right about firewire being the best option, but he obviously doesn’t know why.
While I appreciate you calling me a moron,
Seeing as its a hi 8 and not true digital video, the RCA method will work with an acceptable rate of loss. He’s not filming a movie.
I’ll let you all know which works better, but I won’t know for a week or longer, when I’ll get my FireWire card. BTW, the NightShot feature on this camera is fucking awesome–I can’t believe how well this thing can see in the dark!
marc – it’s not an “acceptable rate of loss” when you can use firewire just as easily, with a less expensive card, with no loss at all.