We recently bought a DV cam, Panasonic NV GS-320.

Once a movie has been recorded and that we want to transfer it from the camera's digital tape to a hard disk, is the transfer only done at playback speed? Seems like an awful slow option, a one hour movie requiring an hour of transfer...

Forgot to mention, using USB cable.

Is firewire faster to transfer video or is playback speed still the ony option?

I could buy a card if so. My A8N5X MoBo doesn't have firewire.

Nice camera the NV GS320., gives very sharp quality video

Yes, I'm afraid so.. the only way to copy your DV movie footage from the cam to a PC is via live capture through a firewire connection..

You've picked the best format though.. MiniDV tape is still number 1, this you'll realise once you transfer it and begin to edit it..

the USB connection is for transfer of stills images only..

Cable I'm using is small usb at one end (into cam) and larger one at the other end (PC).

USB logo can be seen at both ends.

is it USB2 ? for very small video files it may be ok..

check this link for some good pointers..

I've got a JVC miniDV camcorder, and although the manual says that I should be able to transfer through USB, every time I tried things went wrong!

Tried on my laptop through firewire and went perfect, so I went out and bought a firewire card for my PC and all is well now...

Just make sure you got a fast cpu and a big hard drive when you start to play around with video

It's working fine through mini-usb at the cam and usb at the pc. I've transfered 3x 1 hour tapes so far.

It is USB 2.0.

I guess firewire transfers at playback speed as well, but it seems it uses less compression for the transfer, giving better image quality once the data is on HDD?

Thanks for the link.