I'm wondering if it's possible to capture what a digital camera sees live directly to my hard drive with either a USB-to-Firewire cord (hooked up to a computer) or compositve video cable (which some of them seem to have)? I've never owned a digital camera before so I'm not sure exactly how they work.

I ask this because I know they are capable of better pictures than my DV camcorder and I recorded an uncompressed live stream from my camcorder directly to the hard drive using Adobe premiere 6.5. I didn't have to hit record on the camcorder itself to do this (bypassed the tape and compression, I assume since I selected "uncompressed") so I figured it may also be possible to do the same with a high quality digital camera with USB (using a USB to firewire cable) or composite outputs (at least I hope so anyway). I thought if premiere or another capture program could just see what the digital camera sees live than it should be able to record it (hopefully). I won't be surprised if I'm WAY off here, but I figured I'd ask to find out.

If I can do this with a good quality digital camera that'd be great! If this possible is there another capture program that could capture at a higher resolution than Premiere 6.5?

Thanks

I won't be surprised if I'm WAY off here, but I figured I'd ask to find out.

Sorry, but I think you are :-) Some newer still cameras can also shoot video, but usually at reduced frame rates and resolution. I think some of the new Canon's have something approaching 30 fps possibly, but it will still be inferior to a DV camera I'd think.

My Nikon has a video out jack, but it's composite video, rather poor quality, and very low refresh rate. It would look sort of like the bad video they streamed back from the Apollo space flights ;-)

Still cameras can't capture and compress the needed 720x480 30 frames per second for video. Better to use a real video camera for that...

Most digital still cameras coming out do 640x480 video at 30fps. I've seen one that does 800x600, and I think there are some that do 60fps.

HOWEVER.... :)

None of the ones I've seen look as good as the cheapest miniDV camera. Plus very little control over the picture.

I don't know of any that can stream right into your PC.

My 4MP camera will stream direct to the USB port, but it is "webcam" quality video, nowhere near the quality of an actual snapshot or a crappy video camera.