Digital Video Introduction

Digital Video Introduction

Downloading video from your DV camera to your computer places huge demands on your computer's hardware - just consider that for each second of video, you are effectively downloading 25 separate frames of video, plus the high quality sound file associated with that second of video.

Connect a digital video camera to a computer
Because there is such a wide variety of hardware available, it is impossible to detail every possible configuration. The following list describes some of the basic capture devices and explains how to connect them to your computer. Depending on the capture device and associated hardware you have on your computer, you could use none, one, or several of the listed configurations.
When Digital Video cameras first came on to the scene in the 1990's the only computer interface that was able to meet these bandwidth requirements was the 'IEEE1394' standard. This is more commonly referred to as 'Firewire' and to a lesser extent, 'iLink'. Firewire connectivity for video download was thus adopted as a standard across the industry, and it is difficult to come across a DV camera that does not support this connection. The ‘DV socket’ on Canon DV Cameras enables you to link it up to a computer using a 4-pin to 6-pin ‘Firewire’ cable (not included with the camera). In addition to Firewire, The USB2.0 Hi-Speed interface cable is now also able to facilitate the transfer of high quality DV format footage to a PC. This connection method is supported only on Windows XP Service Pack 1 and above on a computer with preinstalled USB 2.0 ports.

Firewire Port
If you have purchased an Apple Macintosh computer within the last 2 or 3 years, you will more than likely find that you already have a Firewire port on your computer. If however, you own a PC, you are less likely to find that your computer is equipped with a Firewire port.


You can add a Firewire port to your desktop computer by purchasing an OHCI Compliant IEEE-1394 PCI card. If you have a USB connection on your video camera, and it is not one of the cameras that support USB 2.0 DV footage download, it is primarily for the purposes of downloading still images from the memory card. Some cameras allow low resolution video recording to the memory card which can also be downloaded through the USB port.

Digital camera connected to an IEEE 1394 card
To get the best quality from your digital video (DV) camera or mini–DV camera, you should have an IEEE 1394 capture card installed on your computer. An IEEE 1394 card is a piece of hardware that passes the information from the DV camera to your computer. Because the data is already in digital form, it can be read and transferred directly to your computer without any processing or conversion. That means you'll enjoy the highest–quality video that is possible with a consumer video camera.
For Firewire, the driver for downloading digital video data from the camera must support the port on the PC, not the camera. As long as the port supports IEEE-1394 (Firewire) data transfer, the computer will be able to download data from the Canon digital video camera using the driver for the card

For the Windows environment; these drivers are built in to Windows versions 98SE, ME, 2000 and XP. Windows 95 is not compatible with Firewire, and Windows 98 First Edition, although compatible, does not carry built in drivers – you will need to purchase a Firewire DV kit (see below), which is shipped with Windows 98 drivers.

For the Macintosh environment, OS 9.1 and above, and OSX and above include native support for Firewire ports and DV cameras. For OS 8.6 to OS 9.04, Firewire support is available from the Apple website.

For cameras that support USB 2.0 Hi-Speed DV footage download, the drivers are supplied on the disk that comes with the camera. This connection method is only supported on Windows XP Service Pack 1 computers with preinstalled USB 2.0 Hi-Speed ports. Please note that no other operating system, PC or Macintosh is compatible with this connection type.
Editing Software
Microsoft Windows XP users can also use the ‘Windows Movie-Maker’ software that is included with that operating system, or the more capable ‘Windows Movie-Maker 2’, available from the Microsoft website. Windows Movie Maker 2 will also need to be used if you intend to download DV footage through the USB 2.0 Hi-speed port available on the MVX35i.

Apple Macintosh owners are able to use the ‘iMovie’ software that is available on some preinstalled machines, or from the Apple website. Other alternatives available from Apple on this platform include Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro.

In addition to the above, there are many commercially available video editing suites that range in price and functionality, for Windows 98 upwards. Think about what you want to achieve with your video editing and conduct research to check that your potential purchase meets with your requirements, technically and functionally.

Burn My Movie On To A DVD
Creating a DVD from your footage is not just a case of copying and pasting the final movie file to DVD burn software, but a complex procedure where you import the video footage, build the menu structure including titles and chapters, and then convert the footage to compressed MPEG2 format. The process is known as 'authoring', and you will need specialist software to do this. If you already have a DVD burner, you may well find that authoring software was bundled with the burner and is already installed on your computer. If you intend to purchase a DVD burner, make sure you choose a product with a generous software bundle. Some video editing applications allow you to save your final movie in DVD format, and also give basic authoring capability. If the software you are using does not have DVD format (MPEG2) as an output option, save it as a High Quality AVI file, and then let the authoring software convert it before the burn process.
Hardware Requirements
Video editing is one of the most resource-intensive processes that you can do on your computer. A computer with a processor speed of less than 1 GHz, and anything less than 512mb of RAM will struggle to cope with the demands placed on it by the capture, editing and rendering process. In addition to this you will also need a large capacity hard-drive dedicated for downloading the raw video footage to, and as a temporary location to store the rendered files. A capacity of 80GB with a rotation speed of 7200rpm is considered the minimum for serious video-editing.