[Doug Sweetser]

Under file there are two ways to get data from a videocam:
apple 8, log and capture
shift apple 8: log and transfer

Those are really similar names I had ignored. I always used apple 8, log and capture for my firewire digital camera. When I hook up a camera that uses USB for file transfers, it never worked.

USB devices use shift apple 8: log and transfer.

The way I am interpreting these names is that the “log” part means final cut now knows about this bit of media, where it starts, where it stops, where it is in the file system. For firewire, the data gets captured because the output can be controlled via play, pause, forward and reverse. For the increasingly common USB-only devices, a file must be transferred as a unit. Editing will happen later.