Sony Handycam USB Streaming & Why You Shouldn't Use It 

i need trv285e drivers for usb streaming.if know link so pls share

same problem i have, usb is not recognize on windows 10. i dont know how can i solve this problem.

USB 2.0 is faster than Firewire400? I don't think so at all.

@@rockrecordreport7136 it is slightly faster in theory. USB2 can be up to 480mbit/s fast (theoretically), while FireWire400 can only reach a speed of 400mbit/s

@@rockrecordreport7136google it

@@rockrecordreport7136usb 2.0 has a theoretical max of 480 mbps so very slightly. They’re basically identical. USB 2 and later usb 3 basically caused the death of FireWire.

What the exact model number of your camcorder? I have a hunch it's either Digital8 only or Video8/Hi8 only and not compatible with whatever format your old tapes are recorded in.

That’s by design and a limitation of the technology, just like USB streaming.

This was recorded using a Sony Hi8 XR Handycam.

Firewire works perfectly in Windows 10. I suppose it does depend on the Firewire card you're using and its compatibility with newer OSes, but I haven't had any issues. In fact, my entire video transfer workflow is done in Windows 10, and I've just been using some no-name Firewire card I bought off eBay. I didn't even need to install drivers for it. As for the quality loss of DV/Firewire or S-Video, it seems that it depends on your source. If all you have are Digital8 tapes, transferring to your computer via Firewire is preferred since they're already digital, and you don't want to incur generational loss as a result of going from digital to analog (S-Video) and then back to digital. However, if you have analog Video8 and Hi8 tapes, the absolute best way to transfer those would be to use S-Video, since the tapes are analog, and using S-Video will avoid the chroma downsampling and lossy compression inherent with DV codec conversion (using something like the TRV120). If you want the best quality for analog 8mm tapes, I'd go the S-video route, using a lossless codec like Lagarith or Huffyuv (since the tapes are analog and thus, no compression to start with). However, I've been using a Digital8 camcorder with analog playback capabilities and just capturing the output over Firewire with no major issues. It's not something a video archivist purist would recommend, but it'll get you 95% of the way there--and it's pretty convenient.

@@stereophonicstuff thank you for the detailed reply..i did buy a pcmcia firewire laptop card a while ago but my current HP no longer support an external card..Since i do not own a pc tower/desktop i purchased a USB to 4pin firewire cable...i will give this a go when it arrives and let you know the outcome.now to manually wind some hi8 8 tapes before i play them in my 120e...better safe than a jammed 30 year old tape. Peace.

Unfortunately, those models do not have an external microphone jack and there’s no way to easily add one.

The CCD-TRV608 has a USB jack but as I showed in the video, the quality is horrible. It doesn't have a Firewire jack, so the easiest and cheapest way would be to use an EZ-Cap. It's not the absolute highest quality you can get, but it's cheap, easy, and readily available on Amazon and eBay. Get an AV cable off eBay for the camcorder; it should have what looks like a 3.5mm headphone jack on one end and Red/White/Yellow RCA jacks on the other (just type in Sony Handycam AV cable). Then feed that into the EZ-Cap or any of the other USB video capture devices like the Dazzle and use that to transfer the videos to your computer.

@@stereophonicstuff thanks so much!!

@@stereophonicstuff I see one cable that has the 3.5mm on one end and one cable that has the usb type port on one end - both have red white yellow on other ends. Where does the 3.5mm headphone jack plug into?

@@joebeck0 The cable that has the USB type port on the end won't work with this Handycam. It's a newer style connector used on Sony's more recent models. This is the cable that'll connect to the camcorder's 3.5mm jack and have RCA outputs that you'll then connect to the RCA inputs of the EZ-Cap: www.ebay.com/itm/283951519603. The 3.5mm headphone style jack will plug into the port on the camcorder that's located toward the front of the camera (it's hidden behind a plastic flap), between the handstrap and Halogen spotlight.

@@stereophonicstuff Got it. Thank you so much for the clarification. Just got the same camcorder myself and excited to use it. Do you have any recommendations for a capture device? I see a few on Amazon but they are upwards of $150!

I've seen a few people that have used "memory recording units" like the Sony HVR MC1 that record digitally from the Firewire jack without the need of using tapes, but bypassing the DV compression and recording uncompressed video is an interesting proposition. That would really work well with flash memory standard definition camcorders and the like that (in my opinion) all record with way too low of a bit-rate (it seems they all max out at around 9Mbps). I'm actually curious, how would you connect a Handycam or another DV camcorder up to the Ninja? Does it offer analog composite/S video inputs?

The Ninja will not take analog (or even anything below 1080i) directly, but I know of a few scalers that effectively do uncompressed frame grabs and scale those up (my late era Funai VCR/DVD combo recorder will do that and barf out a RGB 1080p signal over HDMI so I figure if I can record that uncompressed or "close enough to uncompressed" then scale back down to 480i or 480p, that might work). Now, I might be limited to Sony flash cameras since those actually had S-Video over that semi-proprietary connector Sony used between like 2004-2012 (I recall the Canon FS cameras only having composite over a TRRS connector), but I have plenty of SD Sony cameras (some even of the MiniDV or Digital8 persuasion with a whole S-Video plug).