The internet has been abuzz of late with the news of USB 3.0. Companies such as Intel, Microsoft, HP, and others are banding together to form the USB 3.0 promoter group. The new standard will be based off the architecture of the existing standards and will be backwards-compatible. USB 3.0 is targeted to hit 10x the speed of USB 2.0, which means in the area of 4.8Gbps. What does this mean for camcorders?

USB 3.0 will bring faster transfers to tapeless camcorders, meaning less time moving scenes to your computer and more time watching or editing. It will also be very useful for external hard drives and will probably replace Firewire if the IEEE group doesn’t get a specification faster than 800Mbps out to the public.

As for camcorders that use a Firewire connection, it’s my guess that, if USB 3.0 can sustain transfer rates that are acceptable for HD video (a problem it is plagued by in version 2.0), it will replace Firewire connections on high-end camcorders, where there is enough money to upgrade to new standards. On the consumer end, by the time USB 3.0 has been released and has saturated the market enough, tape-based camcorders may be a thing of the past, anyway.

A complete specification for USB 3.0 is due by the first half of 2008.

Press release [ via Studio Daily ]