HDMI?

[Dougie]

I know a fair amount about video, particularly old school analog video, but not a great deal about digital video. I shoot a lot now on a Nikon digital camera, saving on an SD card. When done, I stick the SD card into my computer and transfer the .mov files to my hard disk, then put them in Videopad to edit. That's my usual routine and I get fairly good results.

 

I noticed that my camera has a HDMI port on it, which I don't know a lot about, so I went on the web, and now I still don't know much about it. So my question is fairly simple: Would there be any advantage to transferring my files from the camera through the HDMI port to the computer? Would the resulting edits in Videopad look any better? It's hard for me to believe that an HDMI cable would transfer better quality signals to the computer then the SD card would. If an HDMI cable won't perform any better in this particular case, that's fine.

 

But if so, my computer has no HDMI port, so what would I need to do.to use one? Thanks!

[borate]

Would there be any advantage to transferring my files from the camera through the HDMI port to the computer? Would the resulting edits in Videopad look any better? My computer has no HDMI port.

 

An HDMI OUTput would be used to connect a camera to a TV that has an HDMI INput. A single cable is all that's required, instead of separate video and audio wires.

As for a PC that has HDMI OUT, a friend streams NetFlix that way because his isn't a "Smart" Internet TV. So, via HDMI, he connects his PC to the TV and watches the flix on a big screen.

[Dougie]

Yes, I understand that HDMI offers good signals to HDMI TV's and monitors. I was just wondering if using the HDMI signals from the camera into the computer for video capture would offer any quality advantage over using the SD card? Or would the resulting captured video be about the same as what the SD card can offer? Does this question make any sense?

[Damian Lettie]

I was just wondering if using the HDMI signals from the camera into the computer for video capture would offer any quality advantage over using the SD card?

 

You can't get any better quality than the original recording, and that's what you're getting from the SD card.