Re: Would you buy a MiniDV camera now?
 

Anything is faster than FireWire, since it limits you to "real time only" capture. Whereas USB 2 & 3 are simply data transfer, faster than real time.

Re: Would you buy a MiniDV camera now?
 

Quote: Will USB 3 be faster than firewire?

For cameras? I'm with Chris on this.

As long as we are talking cameras, it seems like a moot question to me. AFAIK, only tape-based cameras have firewire ports of any kind and they use them only to play tape out (data streaming) rather than file transfer.

Maybe the question matters for those shooting to CF or SD cards and using a card reader to feed the files from the card to computer? To me, that seems off topic for a discussion of whether to buy a small tape based or a small tapeless camera.

Re: Would you buy a MiniDV camera now?
 

Well, my FireWire card reader is indeed much faster than my USB 2 card reader, but that doesn't really matter, since the subject here is MiniDV or HDV tape -- and the only way you can get that tape into the computer is by playing it back in real time, over FireWire. So yes, in *that* context, we're all in agreement that USB 2 or 3 is going to be much faster than FireWire.

Re: Would you buy a MiniDV camera now?
 

Things could be worse, imagine if we still had the SCSI port - my Nikon coolscan uses this, but then it also has an inch of dust on it :-(

I recently purchased a PreSonus Firestudio Mobile external audio device, this uses Firewire. I was told that Firewire doesn\'t make excessive demands on your CPU, compared to USB and therefore would be a better choice for audio work.

Pro grade Camcorders use Firewire because it delivers constant data transfer speed, therefore less likely to incur dropped frames. USB shares data transfer with other processes, therefore you might suffer a few dropped frames. Memory card or straight data transfer will not have this problem as it is just data transfer which does not rely on minute for minute transfer times. If the data transfer is shared with another process then it will just transfer slower, you will not get dropped frames, maybe corrupted data.

The short answer to the original question is, No, move with the times, MiniDV will join the Compact Cassette in a couple of years time.

Re: Would you buy a MiniDV camera now?
 

Throwing my hat into the USB 3 discussion:

USB 3 will never replace Firewire as a constant feed of data. All USB variants require initialization for a "stream" to start. You cannot plug it in and instantly expect a signal.

IMHO, SDI should be where the prosumer market should head into. It\'s already happening with NXCAM and the XF cameras. PCI-E SDI cards also help bypass any problems with USB 3 breakout boxes that could have cable problems that could risk BSODs to the receiving machine.

But, if there\'s a way to put HDV in a ASI signal, that inherently replaces Firewire altogether.