FireWire & setting it

By far the easiest method of capturing video is via FireWire. FireWire (officially known as IEEE 1394, and also known as iLink) is a standard by which data can be exchanged at very high speeds using a special cable and a FireWire port. Most digital video (DV) format cameras include a FireWire port. In addition to data transfer, the FireWire standard includes the ability to control remote devices (such as a camera). This makes capturing video from your DV camera a snap.

Simply connect the camera to your FireWire port, and open your video-editing platform. Most video-editing platforms include some sort of built-in "import" or "capture" functionality. You can generally control the camera from within the application and specify what part of the tape you want to capture. If you want to capture the whole tape, just rewind and hit the capture button.

If your computer doesn't have a FireWire port built in, you can buy a FireWire card for less than $50. If your camera doesn't have FireWire built in, you can buy a digital video converter. Digital video converters take analog audio and video inputs, for example from your camera, and create a DV signal that is available on the FireWire port. An added benefit of digital video converters is that they work both ways, meaning you can send the output of your video editor to the FireWire port, and the digital video converter converts it back to an analog signal that can be displayed on a monitor for quality-assurance purposes.

FireWire settings
One of the advantages (some might say disadvantages) of digitizing via FireWire is that there really are no settings for you to adjust. The DV standard is hard-coded into the entire process. You'll always be capturing full screen, full frame rate, using the DV codec.

The DV codec is another advantage to capturing via FireWire. Digital Video (DV) is compressed as it is recorded, making DV files about 1/5 the size of uncompressed video files. This makes them easier to store and move around. The compression affects image quality, however, and is one of the reasons that DV isn't considered true broadcast quality. However, the ease of use and the price points of DV cameras are virtually impossible to argue with.

Capturing via FireWire isn't really capturing in the truest sense; it's really just transferring the file from your camera (or tape deck) to your computer, just like you'd transfer a file from one computer to another. Because it's just a file transfer process, the video on your computer is an exact copy of the information on your camera.

Transferring files via FireWire using iMovie: A step-by-step example
Like so many things in the MacOS world, transferring DV from your camera to your Mac is a snap. Follow these steps:

1. First, connect your camera to your Mac's FireWire port, and turn your camera on to the playback or VCR position.

2. Open iMovie.

3. iMovie automatically detects that you have a camera connected and opens in "camera mode" (see Figure 1).


Figure 1: iMovie automatically detects a camera connected to your Mac and opens in camera mode.

Tip In camera mode, the stop, play, fast forward, and rewind buttons control your camera. You can use these controls to find the portion of your tape that you want to import.

4. To begin the import process, click the Import button (or hit the spacebar). If the tape is already playing, iMovie starts importing video from that point. If the tape is stopped, iMovie starts tape playback and begins importing.

5. iMovie automatically breaks up the imported video into clips each time it senses a new scene. This can be very handy, but it also can be a problem if you're trying to import a pre-edited piece of video with multiple scenes. You can disable this feature. From the iMovie menu, select Preferences (or just hold down the Apple button and push the comma key). Select the Import tab, and then deselect the "Start a new clip at each scene break" option.

That's it! You can now drag your clips to your iMovie timeline and edit away.