Help With Camcorder & MiniDV Tapes

[SIZE=2]Hello all.. My first post here \o/

Before i say anything, I apologise about this noobie question.. & I hope I'm posting on the correct thread/forum about this... please excuse me if im not.

I need abit of advice/help.. Whichever it is.. I have a Camcorder and i recorded a special occasion(s) on MiniDV tape(s). Now thats all fine and well, However I am looking to put them onto the Pc via cable... I was at jessops today & the guy said i needed a Firewire cable.. But thats about all the use he was... So.. I come here for more help!

I have one somewhere(lol). But my problem is that I dont know what to do after that.. when i either find the firewire cable I have.. Or buy a new one(they arent that expensive from PCWorld) .. So once i have it and connected to my pc.. Could anyone tell me how i am meant to get the Video footage from the MiniDV Tape onto my pc as AVI/MPEG/MOV(whichever i can.. just as long as its playable in WMP etc..)


I looked around and i couldnt find a tech support forum, So I apologise if i missed it.. or if im posting on the wrong thread.


[SIZE=2]Thanks

As this is a photography forum I don't think you will be inundated with replies. However, I'll help best I can. You need to install a Firewire card in your PC, plus a cable from that card to the camera. In addition, you will need software to capture the data from the camera (it also controls the camera).

I would suggest you pop into PC World and pick up the cheapest Firewire card with software bundle you can get as well as a suitable cable. Should be less than £40.

After that, you really need to find a bulletin board that supports video.

I realy do apologise, I thought this might be closest i get to help for this sort of thing.

but I have firewire port in my laptop mate, And as i said.. I have the cable somewhere.. So basically all I need is software to capture it?

I will have a look on google,

Sorry again & thanks for your reply!

Well, your camcorder should have come with some software for transferring video to the computer. My ZR70 did, at least. With that, you should be good for at least the basics. But you'll almost certainly want more memory, and if your laptop's not at least 2 GHz P4 or 1.2 GHz Pentium M/Centrino, you may be overstressing it even then. Oh, and disk space. LOTS of disk space! Those files will be BIG!

If you have Windows XP it comes with Windows Movie Maker which will capture your video.

i presume the slim connection to the forum is that your camera is a Canon?

As mikesd said, XP will capture vid. But capturing is just the first tiny part of doing something meaningful with your video.

Transfering vid to PC will create literally gigabyte+ sized files. I forget the exact ratio, but I think file that I get from about 10 mins uncompressed video is around a gig. So that becomes unwieldy very quick.

You then want to think about best editing software for your application. Pinnacle, Ulead have fine consumer apps. If you want the best (but most complex) imo Adobe Premiere Pro.

Then if you want to create DVDs from your movies, that's another app. Adobe has one, Sonic's pretty good and simple and cheaper.

But you need the biggest hardware to do all this crap. and so on goes the spending.

If you already have Win XP and the firewire cable, I can recommend Pinnacle studios Studio 9.0 for turning the mini DV into something useable.

I have an XL2 which allows for multiple connections (s-video and 3 wire audio cable works best, but I have used firewire as well) and it is very fast to turn it into a DVD format for viewing.