Hi. I have been capturing my xh a1 footage for the past few years with a firewire 4pin to 6pin cable into my firewire port on my desktop. I am thinking of degrading to a 4pin to 4pin cable and capturing to my laptop which has a 4pin input. Will I suffer any loss of quality? Is 4pin firewire cable good enough to handle the data transfer of my xh a1 and other hd camcorders? I am thinking of dropping the expensive tapes and capturing live to my laptop via Onlocation but with a 4pin firewire cable. Am worried about quality and the reliability.

There will be absolutely no difference in image quality.

Even if there was a difference in quality, you can only use the 4-pin out of the camera, so you would have been hooped from the very beginning. But as Chris said, there is no difference.

To be specific, the four pin Firewire cable does not carry power -- the six pin does. So the only possible disadvantage is a bus powered device such as a hard drive will not find the power it needs.

FW400
4 - 4 is data only
4 - 6 is data only
6 - 6 is data and power

FW800
always uses the 9 pin connection though you can degrade the speed (but not the 'quality') of FW800 by using cables that combine four or six pin ends.

Cheers,
GB

Thanks guys! I thought there would be no quality difference. I assume same thing goes for the 9 pin since the camera only outputs the 4pin.

BTW, any of you record tapeless to laptop via Onlocation? I am seriously considering it for wedding ceremony and reception since I can save up to $100 on tapes per wedding.