The story is that I started in Dec 2005 to save my old [and new] movies using a Belken USB device and after much fussing around I got sight & sound and thought "that must be as good as it gets". A month later after the good oil from MM Forum I was into firewire and it was so much better I sent most of my USB footage to the BillyBin.

So apologies for the "limited" footage below, but it is in fact NEW footage from my 8mm digital camcorder, so we are strictly comparing the CAPTURE method [ie not confusing matters with old RECORDING methods]. This was my first trial with the camera mounted on the back of my ATV, hence my constant sideways glances to see if it had fallen off.

The 2 min clip has 30 secs of USB followed by same on firewire then another 30 secs USB and repeat on firewire. I have saved at 1,500 kbps in the first one and 340 kbps in the second

To me there is no comparision, especially the audio. So in 340 ver the OUTPUT sound is only 25% quality of MP3 BUT there is still a huge difference between the USB and Firewire captures [inferring that your lovely digitally recorded sound at 128 kbps or better is maybe munched down to 8 or so by the USB].