Some general questions

slave1

How can I tell whether my USB ports are 1.1 or 2.0

Have ordered eircom broadband that will have a wireless transmitter - ie feeding from my land line to a wireless rather than wireless broadband if you catch my drift!! - and am looking for a good quality wireless usb receiver for my pc.
Can someone recommend one - have had a look at various site but just too many to choose from and I don't want to ruin the broadband with a crappy receiver.

I have an Athlon 2.2, ME, 512RAM pc, brand new 160gig HDD

Also, am using roxio to take footage from my Sony HC18E DV handycam, but the lip synch starts going after a few minutes on a 1hr tape.
What am I doing wrong?
So I got Pinnacle 9 but it only takes DV from a firewire port, which I do not have. Is it worth investing in a firewire port to solve this problem?

Apologies if these questions have been covered, had a look and could not find them

Tks

Mr. Presentable

OK. Your ports are almost certainly USB 2.0. If your OS is not Windows 9x/Millenium, then it supports 2.0. You can buy a USR USB wireless receiver for your PC for about 89.00, but, a PCI one is better, and about 64.99.

homerzero

eircom are selling the usb reciever for €50

http://www.eircom.ie/cgi-bin/bvsm/bveircom/store/productListing.jsp?store=Res&Title=Wireless%20Broadband%20&shopCategory=retrieveCPEResidentialWiFiModems&chanId=536892170&storeChanId=536892170&BV_SessionID=@@@@0373827128.1102106887@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccccadddfdhgflicefeceiedffndffg.0

heggie

if you have ME, and that came with it, almost certainly not usb 2

vibe666

if you want to know fr sure if you have usb 2 or not, right click on my computer and choose properties. go to the hardware tab and click on device manager and scroll down to the bottom to universal serial bus controllers. if you have usb2, at least one of the items in this menu will either say USB2 or high speed usb. if not then it's probably usb1.1 but as was already said by spannerhead, your spec would indicate a good chance of usb2.

in any case, if you want to use the usb port for your broadband connection usb won't make a blind bit of difference because usb1 is still many times faster than your internet connection is, so no bottleneck.

what connection are you using to transfer the footage? if it's an svideo connection or composite then there shouldn't be any problem unless you are having trouble with you disk I/O, with the rate at which you can record onto your hard disk being the bottleneck.

a lot of the time video capture bottlenecks are down to settings just being 'not quite right' for the job in hand.

what format are you capturing to, and what sort of bitrates are you using etc?

the more details you give us the easier it will be to diagnose.

slave1

tks for prompt replies

prob could help if I said it was a K7S5A motherboard
purchased in late 2002, I put ME on myself it did not come with O/S - self build
just read last post, no such luck in device manager, so looks like USB 1.1
confirmed reading the motherboard manual, put that query to bed, thanks

"in any case, if you want to use the usb port for your broadband connection usb won't make a blind bit of difference because usb1 is still many times faster than your internet connection is, so no bottleneck"

well that answers my underlying query, thanks to you

surprised at the 50 yo yo price tag on the wireless USB receiver, money aint an object because the BB is being paid though work and I'll be charging back the cost of the receiver also
I went for USB just in case I have a laptop or whatever, also easier to move the antenna in case there is recieving issues with wall/line of sight
linksys was mentioned but I was getting caught up in the whole 12 Vs 54 MBPS stuff, shoudl I just go for 12 - will that create a bottleneck on the BB?
Linksys was recommend by guy at work but no particular model


Onto the dv footage, using a USB connection to capture both sound/vision, I have a pinnacle TV card but the quality is crappo, hence move to USB.
Seeing as my USB is now 1.1 does that make the move to firewire wiser?
Excuse ignorance, how do I know the bitrate
Tks

Capt'n Midnight

USB 1 is still faster than your DSL even before you take into account contention - so not to worry about the broadband.

USB is on the motherboard - so mentioning it's type or the model of PC would help a lot ! - You could also buy a USB 2.0 PCI card if push came to shove.

slave1

jumping the gun a bit and assuming that USB 2.0 could help me out a bit and maybe firewire, does this fit the bill

if ye reckon its worth it, how does this compare to the Eircom options at the same price

komplett don't seem to stock linksys, elara have this

which would ye go for the eircom Netopia of the Linksys????

vibe666

Sunsway/ST Lab PCI USB2.0/FireWire Combo ,2x FireWire (6-pin),3x USB 2.0. First impressions would be that it looks good. will give you exactly what you want for a decent price.

As for wifi, I wouldn't recommend using the USB option. At least not long term. they're okay for convenience's sake, but have a habit of bending on you if you accidentally knock it (think of a knife jammed in a door frame).

something much better would be one of THESE, the CNet Wireless-G PCI 54 Mbps 802.11g, WPA. Top security, and if you decide to upgrade to XP you can even use it as a wifi access point and share out your internet connection to other hardware. Not to mention the external arial which will give you better range.

as for the thrid one, I wouldn't bother. USB is great for mice, and portable hard drives etc. but don't use it for the sake of it if there are better options out there. you have 5 PCI slots so they're your first place to start with upgrades.

btw, there's lots of info about your board HERE.

As for the video 'jitters' it depends on how much data is coming through the USB port as to whether it's that causing it or some other factor. if you buy a USB TV adapter it will work just as well on USB1 as USB2, so assuming your camcorder is pumping the same sort of data stream into your PC it shouldn't be that.

but without knowing the exact process it is going through to get the video from camcorder to PC I honestly couldn't say, it's not really my area of expertise.

slave1

tks for the replies

I have gone for the aformentioned usb 2.0/firewire PCI card and will see if that - firewire - improves my dv footage capture

I have gone for elara's linksys wireless - I opted for USB because more than likely I will have visitors to usitilise the broadband so they can just connect up the wireless to their laptop rather than clog up my pc with all their crap

the motherboard site looks good, but everything is working at the minute so am not going to tempt faith

will exhume this post when all the stuff arrives and I get to flute around with for a while

daveJAM

The k7s5a doesn't have usb2. If the wireless router your getting is 802.11b then usb1 will be fine, if its 802.11g then you'll need usb2 in order to get full speed when using the network but you'll still get BB at full speed as its much slower than 802.11b and usb1.

Peteee

If you want to capture video using a DV camera, then you NEED a firewire port.

I got a cheap one from komplett for 16 euro's, works like a charm.

USB is not indended for DV capture.

Sony have USB streaming on some of theier cameras, but tbh, this is more of a webcam function.

Cant really help you on hte wireless things, sorry

kaimera

not that you know much about the video editing either peter bai

vibe666

kaimera wrote:

not that you know much about the video editing either peter bai

ouch. saucer of milk for table twelve please. meow!