There are only two USB devices that I know of that will legitimately capture tapes via firewire, and both are from the same company. These are premium devices, unlike those cheap/scam "usb to firewire" cables. Avoid those. Anyway, device one is called "
Pinnacle Studio Moviebox Ultimate". It looks a lot like a PC mouse but with a few video inputs in it (incl. firewire) :
The second device, below, is the one that I personally own and use and is called "Pinnacle Systems Liquid Edition Pro 6 Movie Breakout Box"
As you can see, this one has a lot of inputs and is the better value. I use this on my old WinXP machine, so I do not know if it will work on newer PC's. It's tricky to find at a good price, and harder to find with its power supply. I don't know what a replacement supply would cost or where to find one. On top of that, it requires the original editing software that came with it to be installed to operate (the software contains the drivers for the movie box). And lastly, it requires some really old, tough-to-find 'mstape' windows driver file and another file I forget the name of + workaround to be placed into the windows directory before the software will recognize your HDV camera for capture.
The device(s) work by connecting one end of the firewire cable to the Breakout box and the other to your camera. A usb cable (printer-type) is connected from the box to your PC's USB port. The software will then perfectly capture the .MTS (MPEG-2) stream with no frame drops (unless your tape is damaged of course). I don't know if the smaller Ultimate USB box requires a power supply as i've never used it.
If this sounds like a route you'd like to persue, I will help you. If you do decide to buy a Breakout box, don't buy the silver one. It looks almost the same but it has no firewire port! But I can confirm the Breakout box works. I last used it just a couple of months ago.
