I am planning on buying the HV30 for a deck. I have looked at the specs and do not see a firewire port on the HV30. Is there one? If not, how are you guys connecting to your computer?

Thanks,

There is a firewire port. It's covered near the battery compartment.

It has FireWire Port (=IE1394).

It also has an HDMI port in the same area. A very nice feature and option for this level of camera.

See attached grab from owner's manual -- circle #13 -- click to see it big.

does anyone know if i would get better quality from importing from the HDMI output rather than the HDV/DV firewire. Ide be using it as a deck also for my A1

Not better quality, necessarily, but a better codec. You'd need a way to digitize HDMI, which requires additional hardware, but it's inexpensive as video gear goes. BlackMagic makes the Intensity, which starts around $249 USD and goes in a desktop computer. Then, you get the choice to digitize to whatever codec you choose. This is beneficial when you need an I frame codec for use in effects or other compositions, where additional rendering passes will be involved. I frame codecs are also generally less demanding on the processor, freeing up cycles to handle other stuff.

does anyone know if i would get better quality from importing from the HDMI output rather than the HDV/DV firewire. Ide be using it as a deck also for my A1

No.

Once the images are on tape, they are stored as HDV. So you can't gain quality by extracting them in a different way.

Recording live is a different matter.

If you have a means of capturing 1080p images, you can bypass the tape/HDV stage completely.

You should have no problems. I use my HV-30 as a deck to my laptop in the field.


I am planning on buying the HV30 for a deck. I have looked at the specs and do not see a firewire port on the HV30. Is there one? If not, how are you guys connecting to your computer?

Thanks,