Firewire ?

[Rex]

I had a family member ask me a question on whether firewire would speed up the recording of a DVD from a camcorder source. I was telling him how firewire has more bandwidith thus allowing higher data transmission speeds. I was stumped by the question, so I didnt know if firewire speeds up the process in that regard. Can anyone explain this in more detail?

 

[BMXTRIX]

Not that I have ever heard of.

Video on digital cameras is stored on tape using the DV codecs. This compression algorithm is different than MPEG2 which is what DVD uses. So, any transfer from digital video to DVD requires an encoding format, which will likely degrade the quality of the video somewhat.

When you use firewire between a camcorder and a PC the PC allows you to transfer the DV encoded video directly to your computer with no change at all. It is a digital transfer and retains 100% of the quality of the original video - or at least is should. Then in your PC, you can edit or do whatever you want, then you can burn a DVD... The DVD will still need MPEG2 video on it which is what DVD authoring programs handle.

Anyway, high speed dubbing is typically not supported by cameras, though I believe that I have heard of a couple that do allow for it.

 

[Rex]

Thanks for the info, there is so much to learn