Digital video cameras are very affordable now. Add in the ability to edit the videos on your computer and you get a very nice package. But there are few shortcomings for most of the current crop of these cameras when it comes to connecting the camera and your computer. The video to computer connection typically use a Firewire connection. Most computers do not have Firewire ports. They do have USB ports. Will these do as well? After all the camera says it supports USB ports too. The answer is no! The current crop really needs a Firewire connection since only that connection has the required capacity to transfer video at full speed. The camera's USB connection is set to the USB 1.1 standard which is a mere fraction of Firewire's speed. So even if the camera does allow you to transfer video using the USB connection it will be at a very slow speed. But you say that most computers made since 2003 have USB 2.0 ports that should be fast enough. True but the cameras typically support only support older much slower USB 1.1. I suspect that in 2005 we will see cameras with USB 2.0 support and then you can forget about Firewire.

Until USB 2.0 is on your video camera you can get a Firewire PC card (previous called PCMCIA cards) that plugs into your laptop's PC card slot. If you have a laptop that does not have USB 2.0 on it, you can get a combination USB 2.0 and Firewire PC cards. PC cards are typically $100 Canadian not matter what they do. By the way, Firewire connection cables are usually not included with the video camera or the PC cards. You can get one for $30 all the way up to almost $100 Canadian. The cheapest cable will be OK.

Most video cameras will also allow you to use them as digital cameras. The problem is that the resolution is usually smaller than 1 mega pixels which is poor compared to the 3 mega pixels that you need for good quality pictures. (In camera mode you can often store pictures to an SD card.)

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