I'm a beginner at this, so can't comment on the rest of the contents of this discussion - but so far the ONLY way I've been able to capture is via USB. I suspect the firewire port on my computer is defective - I'll need to do something about that. I can't get the computer to recognize the camcorder through it. But it does recognize the camcorder through a USB connection, and I've been able to capture videos that way.

With that in mind - does anyone know if there's a difference in the quality of the capture between USB and firewire? Should I bother trying to get the firewire port working if I can capture via USB?