Connecting it all together

Getting Connected - by Gordon Sutton

Are you wondering about what camera connections to use and why?

In the early days of domestic camcorders the simplest way of showing your video masterpiece on the lounge television was via the TV aerial coaxial socket RF (radio frequency) connection. You did, of course, have to tune in one of your TV channels to accept the signal from your camcorder.

The best way of linking your camcorder to a video recorder, if you were lucky enough to own one, would have been via phono connectors, one for audio (in the days of mono) and another for the composite video signal, and known collectively as ‘line inputs/outputs’. As time progressed the cameras were fitted with a stereo microphone and the added alternative of an S-video socket to the line video socket. S-video splits the colour elements and therefore gives a superior image to the composite line source, which in turn is better than the basic RF signal. For the line phono connections the adopted plug colour convention is: video - yellow, audio L (left channel) - white, audio R (right channel) - red. If your playback TV/monitor only has one audio phono socket then use of the left channel white plug is recommended.

With the advent of digital video (DV) camcorders Firewire and USB connections have also appeared. To take full advantage of the quality offered by DV, a Firewire cable is required with means of accepting this input at your computer, on the assumption that you are going to edit your video by that means (and that’s another story). The Firewire (IEEE 1394) sockets are either 4 or 6 pin, so make sure you have the correct cable. Firewire carries all information in one cable to the extent that your computer can control your camcorder. The two extra pins support a power supply. Data transfer via this link is capable of speeds up to 400 megabits per second (Mb/s) and can be used in conjunction with external disc drives and DVD writers. Since the arrival of the PC operating system Windows 98, the Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection has become common place in recent years and is used for connecting devices such as printers, scanners and digital still cameras. It’s also hot plugable, meaning it’s not necessary to re-start your system before it is recognised by the computer. Although very popular, data transfer is limited to 12Mb/s and not therefore suitable for video work. However, a new USB 2 standard is currently being introduced which can operate up to 480Mb/s but is not supported by Windows 98 or lower. Not to be left out an even faster version of Firewire is in the pipeline called IEEE 1394b, which can operate at speeds in excess of 800Mb/s. In theory this would mean being able to copy the contents of a CD-Rom in just over one second. This all leaves me pretty breathless!