|
Transfering the video from the miniDV tape to the computer would yield a much higher quality video than a simple tv capture. The reason is that the miniDV tape is really the same as a tape drive. The video signal is encoded in a digital file at 3.5Mbits/sec., so when you use the firewire connection all you're doing is transfering a digital file to your computer. That means no quality loss and no data degradation. It also doesn't require your PC to encode the video since it's already in DV format.
If you use tv capture instead your computer has to re-encode the video stream, which takes cpu time, and record the video file to your HD. This tends to give much lower quality video than direct file transfer.
In short, there is no reason not to use digital transfer with firewire if you have access to it. Also, premiere is the best package i've found out there for video editing, although it'll cost you around $500.
__________________
"Empirically observed covariation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for causality" - Edward Tufte
|