Vid Cam data transfer Questions

[Platinum Pete]

I got myself a great deal on a Sanyo Xacti C5 digi-vid cam. The cords that cam with it are USB2, but my iBook is Firewire and USB(original flavor), and thus far the transfer of even short clips is dreadfully slow. Any suggestions?
It is weird that I can play Quicktime vids on the iBook straight from the cam pretty quickly, but when I try to import them to iMovie HD they take 4-ever. It doesn't help that iMovie doesn't recognize the camera since it isn't coming through the Firewire, any ideas on that piece?

Would I notice a speed bump if I got one of those SD card readers that plug right into the computer? Is there a USB2 to firewire adapter out there?

I'm pumped to make some fun movies, but if getting them into the computer is going to take a zillion years, it'll really limit what I can do.

[srozing]

There might be a firewire connector for your video camera too. Otherwise you want a USB2 connector on your computer (you can probably get a PCMCIA card for that). Original USB SUCKS hard, it's really slow. USB2 is almost as fast as firewire I believe.

My camera (it's a minidv though) didn't come with firewire cable, but then I bought a firewire card and it came with the right cable that fit my camera.

I dont think you can get usb2 to firewire adapter; they're pretty fundamentally different.

When you play the vids straight off the camera you are probably not having to transfer the whole video. It probably transfers a much lower quality (and most likely compressed) version. Whereas if you're trying to transfer the video to your computer for editing; or hell, even just to watch, you probably want to get max quality possible. Then you can compress it to some other format to save space if you want.

[RShea]

You could try something like this card:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=4772A&cat=CCD or as the previous poster stated a straight USB 2.0 PCCard.

[Platinum Pete]

No PC card slot on a G4 iBook, unfortunately.

[nick > jesus]

try to find a fire wire, before my sister borrowed and lost my camera that was all i used

[bossass]

Pete,

Really sorry about this. I didn't even think of it since I didn't use the camera all that much.

Your iBook has USB 2.0, correct? So you should be able to download the mpeg4 files quickly to it, and then import to iMovie.

Is the slowness in importing the file into iMovie from you HD, or are you trying to import directly from the camera to iMovie?

A card reader will be signifcantely faster, and I recommend importing to your HD from the camera, and then importing that into iMovie. Not as efficient as FW into iMovie, but I would think it would work in a relatively timely manner.

[RShea]

No PC card slot on a G4 iBook, unfortunately.

Then the options are to go buy a real computer- not one of those proprietary Mac's or get a new video camera with Firewire built in If there are any solutions for converter sold to go Firewire to USB (they are different animals) in my 24 years of computer experience I have not seen one yet. Google came up with this web site on the discussion:

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-fi...sb-adapter.htm

Click on a few of the Google ad words there for some options(??), if a new camera is not in the budget. - The first one is the wrong way- going from Firewire camera to USB 2.0. No idea of how well anything like that may work at all if it exists.

[Red Baron]

iMovie does not like USB, be it 1.0 or 2.0 - it likes firewire, even though the data transfer rates on FW400 and USB2 are close, it has something to do with the "way" the data is handled in firewire that just works better.

[Platinum Pete]

Pete,

Really sorry about this. I didn't even think of it since I didn't use the camera all that much.

Your iBook has USB 2.0, correct? So you should be able to download the mpeg4 files quickly to it, and then import to iMovie.

Is the slowness in importing the file into iMovie from you HD, or are you trying to import directly from the camera to iMovie?

A card reader will be signifcantely faster, and I recommend importing to your HD from the camera, and then importing that into iMovie. Not as efficient as FW into iMovie, but I would think it would work in a relatively timely manner.

Don't be sorry, I'll either be patient or find a work around, but I still got a great deal. I ordered that Western Digital hard drive, which should have a USB2 direct line in on the front and that will firewire to my iBook, we'll see how much that helps. I don't care if I import directly into iMovie or not, nor do I know what I have to gain that way, I just want to edit my crappy clips and get YouTube famous.