Connectivity
Nearly all DV camcorders and decks have IEEE 1394 (FireWire, i.LINK) ports for digital video transfer. When video is captured onto a computer it is stored in a container file, which can be either raw DV stream, AVI, WMV or QuickTime. Whichever container is used, the video itself is not re-encoded and represents a complete digital copy of what has been recorded onto tape. If needed, the video can be recorded back to tape to obtain full and lossless copy of the original footage.
Some camcorders also feature a USB 2.0 port for computer connection. This port is usually used for transferring still images, but not for video transfer. Camcorders that offer video transfer over USB usually do not deliver full DV quality - usually it is 320x240 video (except for the Sony DCR-PC1000 camcorder and some Panasonic camcorders providing transfer of a full-quality DV stream via USB).
High end cameras and VTRs may have additional professional outputs such as SDI, SDTI or analog component video. All DV variants have a time code, but some older or consumer computer applications fail to take advantage of it.
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