I'm venturing into the world of digital camcorders, and I've bought a nice starter level one (Sony HC26). Anyway, I've been reading that firewire is a better choice than USB 2.0. I'm a little confused by this, since USB 2.0 is faster, in spec and theory. Is it something to do with the transmission methods, since USB is serial...meaning a small "path"? I haven't found a good clear explanation on this online. My camera has both, and I've bene using the firewire interface without any issues. Pinnacle Studio Plus 10 is nice, by the way....but I'm just asking out of curiosity.
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USB 2.0 vs Firewire
- Thread starter djnes
- Start date
I'm pretty sure they use a different architecture, with Firewires architecture being faster, I think USB's architecture is Master slave(?) and I'm pretty sure Firewire's is Peer to Peer.
These tests were posted on another forum I visit:
Read Test:
* 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 33% faster than USB 2.0
* 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 70% faster than USB 2.0
Write Test:
* 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 16% faster than USB 2.0
* 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 48% faster than USB 2.0
These tests were posted on another forum I visit:
Read Test:
* 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 33% faster than USB 2.0
* 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 70% faster than USB 2.0
Write Test:
* 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 16% faster than USB 2.0
* 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 48% faster than USB 2.0
Keep in mind that the spec. speeds are bus speeds, and not the speed available to any particular device. Just like speeds in networking, the maximums are almost never reached.
I've never seen a good explanation of why, but nearly every test shows that firewire has a higher sustained speed during transfers.
Also a great advantage of firewire for video (depending on what your planning to do) is that a lot of professional/semi-professional video equipment comes with firewire ports and great support for using it to transfer video. So being set up to use firewire can a great convenience.
I've never seen a good explanation of why, but nearly every test shows that firewire has a higher sustained speed during transfers.
Also a great advantage of firewire for video (depending on what your planning to do) is that a lot of professional/semi-professional video equipment comes with firewire ports and great support for using it to transfer video. So being set up to use firewire can a great convenience.
At least my video camera transmits video to the computer in real time (so a ten minute video takes ten minutes to transmit), so the speed of the protocol doesn't make a difference provided it's above some minimum, which both USB2 and firewire are. But this might be different with cameras which aren't DV tape based.